On a Sunday, the 5th of February, 1733, there came toddling into that
narrow passage of the Temple known as Tanfield Court an elderly lady by
the name of Mrs Love. It was just after one o'clock of the afternoon.
The giants of St Dunstan's behind her had only a minute before rapped
out the hour with their clubs.
Mrs Love's business was at once charitable and social. She was going,
by appointment made on the previous Friday night, to eat dinner with
a frail old lady named Mrs Duncomb, who lived in chambers on the third
floor of one of the buildings that had entry from the court. Mrs Duncomb
was the widow of a law stationer of the City. She had been a widow for a
good number of years. The deceased law stationer, if he had not left her
rich, at least had left her in fairly comfortable circumstances. It
was said about the environs that she had some property, and this fact,
combined with the other that she was obviously nearing the end of life's
journey, made her an object of melancholy interest to the womenkind of
the neighbourhood.
Mrs Duncomb was looked after by a couple of servants. One of them, Betty
Harrison, had been the old lady's companion for a lifetime. Mrs
Duncomb, described as "old," was only sixty.[16] Her weakness and bodily
condition seem to have made her appear much older. Betty, then, also
described as "old," may have been of an age with her mistress, or even
older. She was, at all events, not by much less frail. The other servant
was a comparatively new addition to the establishment, a fresh little
girl of about seventeen, Ann (or Nanny) Price by name.
Mrs Love climbed the three flights of stairs to the top landing. It
surprised her, or disturbed her, but little that she found no signs of
life on the various floors, because it was, as we have seen, a Sunday.
The occupants of the chambers of the staircase, mostly gentlemen
connected in one way or another with the law, would be, she knew abroad
for the eating of their Sunday dinners, either at their favourite
taverns or at commons in the Temple itself. What did rather disturb
kindly Mrs Love was the fact that she found Mrs Duncomb's outer door
closed--an unwonted fact--and it faintly surprised her that no odour of
cooking greeted her nostrils.
Mrs Love knocked. There was no reply. She knocked, indeed, at intervals
over a period of some fifteen minutes, still obtaining no response. The
disturbed sense of something being wrong became stronger and stronger in
the mind of Mrs Love.
On the night of the previous Friday she had been calling upon Mrs
Duncomb, and she had found the old lady very weak, very nervous, and
very low in spirits. It had not been a very cheerful visit all round,
because the old maidservant, Betty Harrison, had also been far from
well. There had been a good deal of talk between the old women of dying,
a subject to which their minds had been very prone to revert. Besides
Mrs Love there were two other visitors, but they too failed to cheer the
old couple up. One of the visitors, a laundress of the Temple called
Mrs Oliphant, had done her best, poohpoohing such melancholy talk, and
attributing the low spirits in which the old women found themselves
to the bleakness of the February weather, and promising them that they
would find a new lease of life with the advent of spring. But Mrs Betty
especially had been hard to console.
"My mistress," she had said to cheerful Mrs Oliphant, "will talk of
dying. And she would have me die with her."
As she stood in considerable perturbation of mind on the cheerless
third-floor landing that Sunday afternoon Mrs Love found small matter
for comfort in her memory of the Friday evening. She remembered that old
Mrs Duncomb had spoken complainingly of the lonesomeness which had
come upon her floor by the vacation of the chambers opposite her on
the landing. The tenant had gone a day or two before, leaving the rooms
empty of furniture, and the key with a Mr Twysden.
Mrs. Love, turning to view the door opposite to that on which she had
been rapping so long and so ineffectively, had a shuddery feeling that
she was alone on the top of the world.
She remembered how she had left Mrs Duncomb on the Friday night. Mrs
Oliphant had departed first, accompanied by the second visitor, one
Sarah Malcolm, a charwoman who had worked for Mrs Duncomb up to the
previous Christmas, and who had called in to see how her former employer
was faring. An odd, silent sort of young woman this Sarah, good-looking
in a hardfeatured sort of way, she had taken but a very small part in
the conversation, but had sat staring rather sullenly into the fire by
the side of Betty Harrison, or else casting a flickering glance about
the room. Mrs Love, before following the other two women downstairs, had
helped the ailing Betty to get Mrs Duncomb settled for the night. In the
dim candle-light and the faint glow of the fire that scarce illumined
the wainscoted room the high tester-bed of the old lady, with its
curtains, had seemed like a shadowed catafalque, an illusion nothing
lessened by the frail old figure under the bedclothing.
It came to the mind of Mrs Love that the illness manifesting itself in
Betty on the Friday night had worsened. Nanny, she imagined, must have
gone abroad on some errand. The old servant, she thought, was too ill to
come to the door, and her voice would be too weak to convey an answer to
the knocking. Mrs Love, not without a shudder for the chill feeling of
that top landing, betook herself downstairs again to make what inquiry
she might. It happened that she met one of her fellow-visitors of the
Friday night, Mrs Oliphant.
Mrs Oliphant was sympathetic, but could not give any information. She
had seen no member of the old lady's establishment that day. She could
only advise Mrs Love to go upstairs again and knock louder.
This Mrs Love did, but again got no reply. She then evolved the theory
that Betty had died during the night, and that Nanny, Mrs Duncomb being
confined to bed, had gone to look for help, possibly from her sister,
and to find a woman who would lay out the body of the old servant. With
this in her mind Mrs Love descended the stairs once more, and went to
look for another friend of Mrs Duncomb's, a Mrs Rhymer.
Mrs Rhymer was a friend of the old lady's of some thirty years'
standing. She was, indeed, named as executrix in Mrs Duncomb's will. Mrs
Love finding her and explaining the situation as she saw it, Mrs Rhymer
at once returned with Mrs Love to Tanfield Court.
The two women ascended the stairs, and tried pushing the old lady's
door. It refused to yield to their efforts. Then Mrs Love went to the
staircase window that overlooked the court, and gazed around to see if
there was anyone about who might help. Some distance away, at the door,
we are told, "of my Lord Bishop of Bangor," was the third of Friday
night's visitors to Mrs Duncomb, the charwoman named Sarah Malcolm. Mrs
Love hailed her.
"Prithee, Sarah," begged Mrs Love, "go and fetch a smith to open Mrs
Duncomb's door."
"I will go at all speed," Sarah assured her, with ready willingness, and
off she sped. Mrs Love and Mrs Rhymer waited some time. Sarah came back
with Mrs Oliphant in tow, but had been unable to secure the services of
a locksmith. This was probably due to the fact that it was a Sunday.
By now both Mrs Love and Mrs Rhymer had become deeply apprehensive, and
the former appealed to Mrs Oliphant. "I do believe they are all dead,
and the smith is not come!" cried Mrs Love. "What shall we do, Mrs
Oliphant?"
Mrs Oliphant, much younger than the others, seems to have been a woman
of resource. She had from Mr Twysden, she said, the key of the vacant
chambers opposite to Mrs Duncomb's. "Now let me see," she continued, "if
I cannot get out of the back chamber window into the gutter, and so into
Mrs Duncomb's apartment."
The other women urged her to try.[17] Mrs Oliphant set off, her heels
echoing in the empty rooms. Presently the waiting women heard a
pane snap, and they guessed that Mrs Oliphant had broken through Mrs
Duncomb's casement to get at the handle. They heard, through the door,
the noise of furniture being moved as she got through the window. Then
came a shriek, the scuffle of feet. The outer door of Mrs Duncomb's
chambers was flung open. Mrs Oliphant, ashen-faced, appeared on the
landing. "God! Oh, gracious God!" she cried. "They're all murdered!"