In the bright June sunlight a crowd filled the square, and looked up at
the windows of the old house with the antique insurance marks in its
walls of red brick and the agents' notice-boards hanging like wooden
choppers over the paling. Two constables stood at the broken gate of the
narrow entrance-alley, keeping folk back. The women kept to the outskirts
of the throng, moving now and then as if to see the drawn red blinds of
the old house from a new angle, and talking in whispers. The children
were in the houses, behind closed doors.
A long-nosed man had a little group about him, and he was telling some
story over and over again; and another man, little and fat and wide-eyed,
sought to capture the long-nosed man's audience with some relation in
which a key figured.
"... and it was revealed to me that there'd been something that very
afternoon," the long-nosed man was saying. "I was standing there, where
Constable Saunders is--or rather, I was passing about my business, when
they came out. There was no deceiving me, oh, no deceiving _me! I_ saw
her face...."
"What was it like, Mr. Barrett?" a man asked.
"It was like hers whom our Lord said to, 'Woman, doth any man accuse
thee?'--white as paper, and no mistake! Don't tell _me_!... And so I
walks straight across to Mrs. Barrett, and 'Jane,' I says, 'this must
stop, and stop at once; we are commanded to avoid evil,' I says, 'and it
must come to an end now; let him get help elsewhere.'
"And she says to me, 'John,' she says, 'it's four-and-sixpence a
week'--them was her words.
"'Jane,' I says, 'if it was forty-six thousand pounds it should
stop'... and from that day to this she hasn't set foot inside that gate."
There was a short silence: then,
"Did Mrs. Barrett ever..._ see_ anythink, like?" somebody vaguely
inquired.
Barrett turned austerely on the speaker.
"What Mrs. Barrett saw and Mrs. Barrett didn't see shall not pass these
lips; even as it is written, keep thy tongue from speaking evil," he
said.
Another man spoke.
"He was pretty near canned up in the _Waggon and Horses_ that night,
weren't he, Jim?"
"Yes, 'e 'adn't 'alf copped it...."
"Not standing treat much, neither; he was in the bar, all on his own...."
"So 'e was; we talked about it...."
The fat, scared-eyed man made another attempt.
"She got the key off of me--she 'ad the number of it--she come into my
shop of a Tuesday evening...."
Nobody heeded him.
"Shut your heads," a heavy labourer commented gruffly, "she hasn't been
found yet. 'Ere's the inspectors; we shall know more in a bit."
Two inspectors had come up and were talking to the constables who guarded
the gate. The little fat man ran eagerly forward, saying that she had
bought the key of him. "I remember the number, because of it's being
three one's and three three's--111333!" he exclaimed excitedly.
An inspector put him aside.
"Nobody's been in?" he asked of one of the constables.
"No, sir."
"Then you, Brackley, come with us; you, Smith, keep the gate. There's a
squad on its way."
The two inspectors and the constable passed down the alley and entered
the house. They mounted the wide carved staircase.
"This don't look as if he'd been out much lately," one of the inspectors
muttered as he kicked aside a litter of dead leaves and paper that lay
outside Oleron's door. "I don't think we need knock--break a pane,
Brackley."
The door had two glazed panels; there was a sound of shattered glass; and
Brackley put his hand through the hole his elbow had made and drew back
the latch.
"Faugh!"... choked one of the inspectors as they entered. "Let some light
and air in, quick. It stinks like a hearse--"
The assembly out in the square saw the red blinds go up and the windows
of the old house flung open.
"That's better," said one of the inspectors, putting his head out of a
window and drawing a deep breath.... "That seems to be the bedroom in
there; will you go in, Simms, while I go over the rest?..."
They had drawn up the bedroom blind also, and the waxy-white, emaciated
man on the bed had made a blinker of his hand against the torturing
flood of brightness. Nor could he believe that his hearing was not
playing tricks with him, for there were two policemen in his room,
bending over him and asking where "she" was. He shook his head.
"This woman Bengough... goes by the name of Miss Elsie Bengough... d'ye
hear? Where is she?... No good, Brackley; get him up; be careful with
him; I'll just shove _my_ head out of the window, I think...."
The other inspector had been through Oleron's study and had found
nothing, and was now in the kitchen, kicking aside an ankle-deep mass of
vegetable refuse that cumbered the floor. The kitchen window had no
blind, and was over-shadowed by the blank end of the house across the
alley. The kitchen appeared to be empty.
But the inspector, kicking aside the dead flowers, noticed that a
shuffling track that was not of his making had been swept to a cupboard
in the corner. In the upper part of the door of the cupboard was a square
panel that looked as if it slid on runners. The door itself was closed.
The inspector advanced, put out his hand to the little knob, and slid the
hatch along its groove.
Then he took an involuntary step back again.
Framed in the aperture, and falling forward a little before it jammed
again in its frame, was something that resembled a large lumpy pudding,
done up in a pudding-bag of faded browny red frieze.
"Ah!" said the inspector.
To close the hatch again he would have had to thrust that pudding back
with his hand; and somehow he did not quite like the idea of touching
it. Instead, he turned the handle of the cupboard itself. There was
weight behind it, so much weight that, after opening the door three or
four inches and peering inside, he had to put his shoulder to it in order
to close it again. In closing it he left sticking out, a few inches from
the floor, a triangle of black and white check skirt.
He went into the small hall.
"All right!" he called.
They had got Oleron into his clothes. He still used his hands as
blinkers, and his brain was very confused. A number of things were
happening that he couldn't understand. He couldn't understand the
extraordinary mess of dead flowers there seemed to be everywhere; he
couldn't understand why there should be police officers in his room; he
couldn't understand why one of these should be sent for a four-wheeler
and a stretcher; and he couldn't understand what heavy article they
seemed to be moving about in the kitchen--his kitchen....
"What's the matter?" he muttered sleepily....
Then he heard a murmur in the square, and the stopping of a four-wheeler
outside. A police officer was at his elbow again, and Oleron wondered
why, when he whispered something to him, he should run off a string of
words--something about "used in evidence against you." They had lifted
him to his feet, and were assisting him towards the door....
No, Oleron couldn't understand it at all.
They got him down the stairs and along the alley. Oleron was aware of
confused angry shoutings; he gathered that a number of people wanted to
lynch somebody or other. Then his attention became fixed on a little fat
frightened-eyed man who appeared to be making a statement that an officer
was taking down in a notebook.
"I'd seen her with him ... they was often together ... she came into my
shop and said it was for him ... I thought it was all right ... 111333
the number was," the man was saying.
The people seemed to be very angry; many police were keeping them back;
but one of the inspectors had a voice that Oleron thought quite kind and
friendly. He was telling somebody to get somebody else into the cab
before something or other was brought out; and Oleron noticed that a
four-wheeler was drawn up at the gate. It appeared that it was himself
who was to be put into it; and as they lifted him up he saw that the
inspector tried to stand between him and something that stood behind the
cab, but was not quick enough to prevent Oleron seeing that this
something was a hooded stretcher. The angry voices sounded like a sea;
something hard, like a stone, hit the back of the cab; and the inspector
followed Oleron in and stood with his back to the window nearer the side
where the people were. The door they had put Oleron in at remained open,
apparently till the other inspector should come; and through the opening
Oleron had a glimpse of the hatchet-like "To Let" boards among the
privet-trees. One of them said that the key was at Number Six....
Suddenly the raging of voices was hushed. Along the entrance-alley
shuffling steps were heard, and the other inspector appeared at the
cab door.
"Right away," he said to the driver.
He entered, fastened the door after him, and blocked up the second window
with his back. Between the two inspectors Oleron slept peacefully. The
cab moved down the square, the other vehicle went up the hill. The
mortuary lay that way.