The Attic Murder. S. Fowler Wright
the woman whose voice he heard was a next-door neighbour, Miss Janet Brown, who had looked in with no further purpose than to return a borrowed flat-iron. But it happened that she was already informed of the exciting incident of the afternoon, and when Mrs. Benson detained her for a cup of the tea which could be cheaply obtained by adding fresh water to the leaves in the lodger’s teapot, and naturally mentioned the good fortune which had walked in less than two hours before, Janet was quick to see the connection between the events.
“Edwards?” she asked scornfully. “You call him Mr. Vaughan next time you go up, and see how he’ll jump, or else answer his name without noticing how he’s giving himself away, which would be just as good proof.”
“I don’t think I shall try that,” Mrs. Benson answered doubtfully. She was sensibly trembling between the disappointment at the prospective loss of a most promising lodger, and vaguer fear of what so cunning and unscrupulous a character might be doing among the dowdy dining-room furniture. “I suppose,” she concluded, “I’d better let the police know.”
Miss Brown, a fair-haired angular woman, who showed her half-Scottish ancestry only in her bony figure, and the practical shrewdness with which she faced a difficult world, considered this proposition, and pronounced against it.
“There’ll be a reward offered, if you wait, more like than not. It might be a hundred pounds! You’ll be a fool if you let them know before that. Keep him close, I say, till you see how the cat jumps.”
Mrs. Benson wavered miserably between the prospect of such wealth, and the shadow of a great fear. She was a woman who prided herself upon her respectability, which meant, among other things, that she came of a family who had no dealings with the police.
Even for a criminal to be arrested beneath her roof would tend to taint her with the stigma of an undesired and undesirable notoriety. It was not at all the kind of thing which her deceased parents would have approved. It might not be quite so disgraceful as being behind with the rent (which had actually happened three years ago, though, by the combined mercies of Heaven and Mr. Clay, it was known to none but herself and the landlord’s agent), but it was not the kind of thing that should occur in the house of a woman whose uncle was a builder’s merchant, and whose brother-in-law had once sat on a Rural District Council.
But, far worse than that, suppose that, by not giving information at once, she should “get in trouble” with the police.
“I don’t know,” she said, “what I ought to do. Not rightly. He might clear off before then.”
The last sentence was spoken in a tone between hope and fear. Had she heard the front door bang at that moment, her first sensation might have been relief, rather than regret for a lodger lost, or the romantic shadow of reward faded away.
But Miss Brown put the suggestion aside. “Not he,” she said. “If you don’t let him see you suspect. He’ll be lying too snug for that.... You’ll find he won’t stir out of the door, more likely than not.... You can just wait till the reward comes out, and walk round the corner to pick it up.”
“Suppose they say I ought to have told them before?”
“Told them what? Your lodger’s a different name, isn’t he? How can you tell that as you don’t know? Even then, you won’t do more than a guess.
“You don’t read the papers much. You’re too busy for that, with all our lodgers to feed, and to wash and mend, and the house cleaning from attic down.... But you see the bills. £100 REWARD! Anyone’d stop to read them—and you go straight round on the chance.”
Francis Hammerton, having heard the most part of this conversation, or at least Janet’s part in it, for Mrs. Benson had a voice of less penetrating quality, did not wait to hear more.
He had heard sufficient to conclude that he would not be immediately denounced, and to see that he would increase his peril by confessing an identity already guessed. Janet’s last statement led him to conclude that there were most probably other lodgers in the house, and he saw that this must increase the risk of discovery while he remained listening at Mrs. Benson’s door.
Even in a less compromising position, he would have had no inclination to make himself known to the other occupants of the house, or to give occasion for his presence to be narrated to them. He went back while he safely could.
CHAPTER FOUR
With some trepidation, only partially controlled, Mrs. Benson brought up the supper.
It was a condition of which her lodger might have been less observant had he not already heard the suspicions which had been suggested to her. He had resolved that he would say nothing to confirm them, but rather aim to confuse her with a doubt as to whether her neighbour’s accusation might be no more than a baseless guess, and he was therefore careful to give no sign of observing her agitation. He talked in a casual manner of trivial indifferent things, as one who had the leisure of an unoccupied mind.
The evening had turned wet as the dusk fell, and now the rattling of the ill-fitting window-frame, and the beat of heavy rain on the glass, gave him a good excuse as he said: “I don’t think I’ll go out to fetch my luggage tonight, Mrs. Benson, if you don’t mind.... I shall have to go to the bank in the morning, and I can do everything at the same time.... I daresay I can manage somehow till then.... And I’ll settle up tomorrow for the first week We’re strangers to one another as yet, so I’d rather have it that way, though I hope you’ll get to know me better before long.”
Mrs. Benson was flutteringly acquiescent in her replies. “Yes, sir. It’s for you to say, sir.... Yes, sir. I hope you will. If there’s anything that I could do. Would you like the paper, sir, if as how you’ll be sitting quiet? There’s no one else coming in tonight till the last thing.... Yes, sir, thank you. I wouldn’t ask, but the truth is I’ve been doing that bad since Mr. Michaelson left.... But I’ll bring it up if you’ll be wanting something to read.”
The last offer, which had had its birth in Janet Brown’s livelier brain, was brought out, and repeated, in nervous haste, like a lesson learned. But Mr. Edwards still appeared to notice nothing strange in his landlady’s manners or speech. He said pleasantly that he should like to see it, if it wouldn’t be robbing her. And when she came up, half an hour later, to clear the table, and bringing the final edition of the Evening News, he restrained the half-fearful desire he had to see the published account of his trial and subsequent escape, turning to the sporting page in a desultory manner, until the table was cleared, and she had left the room.
The report itself was not long, the detailed interest of the case having been the news of the previous day, when the evidence had been heard. It consisted mainly of a skilfully condensed summary of the Judge’s address to the jury, the time during which they had been absent from court, and other similar details with which he was already too familiar to give them more than one swift comprehending glance, which went on to where, in bolder type, was the news of his own escape.
It gave him a thrill of exaltation, overcoming for one brief moment the misery that possessed his mind, to realize the extent and energy of the futile search which was being made while he remained within two hundred yards of the headquarters of the baffled power of the law.
But the feeling changed to a greater depression with realization of the desperation of his position, as he went on to read the accurate description of himself which the police had been prompt to communicate to the Press.
He saw a portrait also, which might have been more exact had the artist not thought it necessary to give him a cunningly ingratiating expression, less natural to himself than to the character which the jury’s verdict had fixed upon him.
But for that overheard conversation, he would have walked out at once, trusting to darkness and rain, and regardless of all beside under the urgent fear that the hunted have. As it was, he wondered with what object the newspaper had been brought. If it had been meant as a test, he thought that his demeanour must have puzzled the woman, though, with that detailed description to support suspicion already formed, it could hardly have had a more negative result.
Was