The Greatest Works of Marie Belloc Lowndes. Marie Belloc Lowndes
“They’ve got scarlet fever at her place. So Old Aunt thinks she’d better clear out.”
The husband and wife went to bed early that night, but Mrs. Bunting found she could not sleep. She lay wide awake, hearing the hours, the half-hours, the quarters chime out from the belfry of the old church close by.
And then, just as she was dozing off—it must have been about one o’clock—she heard the sound she had half unconsciously been expecting to hear, that of the lodger’s stealthy footsteps coming down the stairs just outside her room.
He crept along the passage and let himself out very, very quietly.
But though she tried to keep awake, Mrs. Bunting did not hear him come in again, for she soon fell into a heavy sleep.
Oddly enough, she was the first to wake the next morning; odder still, it was she, not Bunting, who jumped out of bed, and going out into the passage, picked up the newspaper which had just been pushed through the letter-box.
But having picked it up, Mrs. Bunting did not go back at once into her bedroom. Instead she lit the gas in the passage, and leaning up against the wall to steady herself, for she was trembling with cold and fatigue, she opened the paper.
Yes, there was the heading she sought:
“The AVENGER Murders”
But, oh, how glad she was to see the words that followed:
“Up to the time of going to press there is little new to report concerning the extraordinary series of crimes which are amazing, and, indeed, staggering not only London, but the whole civilised world, and which would seem to be the work of some woman-hating teetotal fanatic. Since yesterday morning, when the last of these dastardly murders was committed, no reliable clue to the perpetrator, or perpetrators, has been obtained, though several arrests were made in the course of the day. In every case, however, those arrested were able to prove a satisfactory alibi.”
And then, a little lower down:
“The excitement grows and grows. It is not too much to say that even a stranger to London would know that something very unusual was in the air. As for the place where the murder was committed last night—”
“Last night!” thought Mrs. Bunting, startled; and then she realised that “last night,” in this connection, meant the night before last.
She began the sentence again:
“As for the place where the murder was committed last night, all approaches to it were still blocked up to a late hour by hundreds of onlookers, though, of course, nothing now remains in the way of traces of the tragedy.”
Slowly and carefully Mrs. Bunting folded the paper up again in its original creases, and then she stooped and put it back down on the mat where she had found it. She then turned out the gas, and going back into bed she lay down by her still sleeping husband.
“Anything the matter?” Bunting murmured, and stirred uneasily. “Anything the matter, Ellen?”
She answered in a whisper, a whisper thrilling with a strange gladness, “No, nothing, Bunting—nothing the matter! Go to sleep again, my dear.”
They got up an hour later, both in a happy, cheerful mood. Bunting rejoiced at the thought of his daughter’s coming, and even Daisy’s stepmother told herself that it would be pleasant having the girl about the house to help her a bit.
About ten o’clock Bunting went out to do some shopping. He brought back with him a nice little bit of pork for Daisy’s dinner, and three mince-pies. He even remembered to get some apples for the sauce.
Chapter 7
Just as twelve was striking a four-wheeler drew up to the gate.
It brought Daisy—pink-cheeked, excited, laughing-eyed Daisy—a sight to gladden any father’s heart.
“Old Aunt said I was to have a cab if the weather was bad,” she cried out joyously.
There was a bit of a wrangle over the fare. King’s Cross, as all the world knows, is nothing like two miles from the Marylebone Road, but the man clamoured for one and sixpence, and hinted darkly that he had done the young lady a favour in bringing her at all.
While he and Bunting were having words, Daisy, leaving them to it, walked up the flagged path to the door where her stepmother was awaiting her.
As they were exchanging a rather frigid kiss, indeed, ’twas a mere peck on Mrs. Bunting’s part, there fell, with startling suddenness, loud cries on the still, cold air. Long-drawn and wailing, they sounded strangely sad as they rose and fell across the distant roar of traffic in the Edgware Road.
“What’s that?” exclaimed Bunting wonderingly. “Why, whatever’s that?”
The cabman lowered his voice. “Them’s ‘a-crying out that ‘orrible affair at King’s Cross. He’s done for two of ’em this time! That’s what I meant when I said I might ‘a got a better fare. I wouldn’t say nothink before little missy there, but folk ‘ave been coming from all over London the last five or six hours; plenty of toffs, too—but there, there’s nothing to see now!”
“What? Another woman murdered last night?”
Bunting felt tremendously thrilled. What had the five thousand constables been about to let such a dreadful thing happen?
The cabman stared at him, surprised. “Two of ’em, I tell yer— within a few yards of one another. He ‘ave—got a nerve—But, of course, they was drunk. He are got a down on the drink!”
“Have they caught him?” asked Bunting perfunctorily.
“Lord, no! They’ll never catch ’im! It must ‘ave happened hours and hours ago—they was both stone cold. One each end of a little passage what ain’t used no more. That’s why they didn’t find ’em before.”
The hoarse cries were coming nearer and nearer—two news vendors trying to outshout each other.
“‘Orrible discovery near King’s Cross!” they yelled exultingly. “The Avenger again!”
And Bunting, with his daughter’s large straw hold-all in his hand, ran forward into the roadway and recklessly gave a boy a penny for a halfpenny paper.
He felt very much moved and excited. Somehow his acquaintance with young Joe Chandler made these murders seem a personal affair. He hoped that Chandler would come in soon and tell them all about it, as he had done yesterday morning when he, Bunting, had unluckily been out.
As he walked back into the little hall, he heard Daisy’s voice— high, voluble, excited—giving her stepmother a long account of the scarlet fever case, and how at first Old Aunt’s neighbours had thought it was not scarlet fever at all, but just nettlerash.
But as Bunting pushed open the door of the sitting-room, there came a note of sharp alarm in his daughter’s voice, and he heard her cry, “Why, Ellen, whatever is the matter? You do look bad!” and his wife’s muffled answer, “Open the window—do.”
“‘Orrible discovery near King’s Cross—a clue at last!” yelled the newspaper-boys triumphantly.
And then, helplessly, Mrs. Bunting began to laugh. She laughed, and laughed, and laughed, rocking herself to and fro as if in an ecstasy of mirth.
“Why, father, whatever’s the matter with her?”
Daisy looked quite scared.
“She’s in ‘sterics—that’s what it is,” he said shortly. “I’ll just get the water-jug. Wait a minute!”
Bunting felt very put out. Ellen was ridiculous—that’s what she was, to be so easily upset.
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