“WOULD it be possible for me to see some back numbers of the Daily Reporter?” Joan inquired timidly.
“Fill up this form, and the attendant will bring them to you. Will you take a seat over there?”
Joan looked round nervously as she took a seat at one of the slanting tables and waited. It seemed to her that she was doing a very extraordinary thing, but the matter-of-fact manner of the clerk at the desk reassured her. He, at any rate, saw nothing uncommon in her wish to read a file of old newspapers.
The attendant brought a pile of papers and laid them before her.
Joan looked at them absently for a moment. This visit to the British Museum was the outcome of a miserably sleepless night.
Throughout its long hours she had lain tossing restlessly racked by an agony of doubt. She had lived over again that terrible indelible experience of her childhood; again and again she had told herself that it was impossible that there could be any real resemblance between Warchester, the husband she loved with every fibre of her being, and the stranger she had seen in that room looking on to the roofs.
And then the dreadful remembrance of that moment when their eyes had met would rush over her, and she would clench her hands together in an agony, remembering how from the first she had felt that vague sense of familiarity.
She sat up in bed, both hands pressed to her forehead, trying to remember the smallest detail, and in a moment a new idea flashed into her mind. If she had made no mistake, if what she had seen had really taken place, there must have been some account of it in the papers—it must have attracted attention. But ten years ago—it would not be easy to make inquiries now; and then she recalled some words of Warchester’s with regard to some fact he had wished to ascertain—“I shall have to go to the Museum when I am in town and look up a file of the Times.”
Joan had asked questions, had heard that if one wanted to see back numbers of the papers one must go to the Museum.
It was quite simple really. She determined to go up to town and ascertain.
Rising early, she caught the first train, despite her maid’s horrified remonstrances.
When Warchester came in to breakfast from his early morning walk round the home farm he would find her gone; she scarcely dared to think what he would say.
In the British Museum, however, the affair was more easily arranged than she had expected.
Her hand trembled as she turned over the papers. She knew the date of her coming to Davenant —the 12th of May; it was the day before she had climbed on the roofs, therefore the 12th would be the date of the paper she wanted.
She unfolded it slowly, “Murder in Grove Street.” She could scarcely believe her eyes were not playing her false now. As she bent over the paper her heart seemed to stop beating, then to go on in great suffocating throbs. Presently the mist before her eyes cleared, the letters ceased to dance up and down, and grouped themselves into words:
At eight o’clock last night a terrible discovery was made at No. 18 Grove Street. Three rooms on the second floor of the house are occupied by an artist named Wingrove. The house is divided into flats, each of which incomplete in itself. Mr. Wingrove’s flat comprised a sitting-room at the front, a studio behind at the back of the house, and a bedroom parallel with the sitting-room. It was Mr. Wingrove’s custom when he was at his studio to have supper served at eight o’clock by the man in charge of the house, who undertook to provide meals for any of the residents who desired it.
This man, John Perks, had not seen Mr. Wingrove in the afternoon, but he took up supper at the usual time. It was eight o’clock precisely when he went up. The door of the studio was slightly ajar, which rather surprised Perks, as it was contrary to Mr. Wingrove’s usual habit. He pushed it open and went in. Mr. Wingrove was not there; at first sight Perks thought the room was untenanted, but as he put the tray on the table he saw, as he thought, a young woman asleep on the hearthrug. Glancing at her more closely, he noticed that there were dark stains on her white gown. Horror-struck, he bent over her for a moment, realised that it was unmistakably a corpse at which he was gazing, and rushed from the room, calling for help.
Dr. Harrison, of Upper Cavendish Street, was soon on the scene, and gave it as his opinion that the unfortunate woman had been dead for two hours at least. It was at first thought to be a case of suicide, as the girl had been shot through the heart, and the pistol, since identified as Wingrove’s, from which the fatal shot was fired, was lying on the ground close to her right hand; but Mr. Harrison stated that, from the direction the bullet had taken, it was impossible the injury could have been self-inflicted. There is so far no information as to the identity of the victim, who seems to have been a remarkably good-looking young woman of not more than four or five and twenty. She wore a white gown, with no jewellery, but a wedding-ring was found attached to a thin gold chain round her neck beneath her dress. All her garments were unmarked, and evidently home-made. The Caretaker identified her as a lady who had on several occasions come home with Mr. Wingrove to supper, but he had no knowledge of her name or position. Wingrove himself was not in the flat and at the time of going to press no information as to his whereabouts could be obtained.
Joan read the account to the end. She was very pale; there were faint purple shadows beneath her eyes, new lines of pain round her mouth.
As she laid down the pager she sat back in her chair and looked straight before her for a minute. There were few people in the room; all of them were far too intent upon their own business to look at Joan, but later the girl herself could always recall the aspect of the room, the bent white head of the old man by the window, the shabby hat of the woman near her.
So it was true, she said to herself drearily: that scene in the studio into which she could see from the roofs was no figment of a disordered imagination. That motionless form on the rug had been a young girl, only a few years older than Joan herself was now, who had been foully done to death. The man whom Joan had seen moving about the room, burning photographs, placing the pistol in the dead girl’s hand, was, there could be no doubt of it, the murderer, trying to conceal his work. But who was he? That was the question that had driven the colour from Joan’s cheeks, that had beaten upon her brain with maddening reiteration throughout the long past night. To this the paper, as Joan read it, offered no answer.
Hastily she caught up the next day’s edition. Surely there would be something more. Yes, there were two columns devoted to the Grove Street murder—evidently it had loomed somewhat large in the public imagination—but there was little further information. The inquest had been opened, the doctor’s evidence, proving incontestably that the victim had not committed suicide, was taken, but no evidence of her identity was forthcoming, and the artist Wingrove did not appear.
Evidence was given as to the state in which the room was found. Many of Wingrove’s personal effects were missing; apparently a quantity of papers and a number of photographs had been burned in the grate. It was curious to notice how suspicion centred round the missing man, strange to watch its growth in the terms in which he was mentioned. In the first edition he was spoken of as Mr. Wingrove, the artist; later on he became the missing man. At a further, stage Joan read, “There is still no trace of Wingrove; it is thought that he may have made his way to one of the ports, and thence out of the country.” There was a lengthy account of the inquest, which had been adjourned time after time in the hope that there might be some news of Wingrove; but as far as Joan could see there had been nothing to throw any further light upon the tragedy.
At an early stage of the proceedings there seemed to have been some little suspicion of the caretaker. He was subjected to a rigid examination and called upon to account for his movements at the time of the murder, but apparently he cleared himself, for thenceforward the search for Wingrove went on with renewed vigour. There were two curious circumstances that Joan noted—first, that when the girl had been moved, there fell out from her skirts a common tobacco-pouch worked with a circlet of flowers that had once been gaudy, but was now dirty; secondly, a man’s malacca cane, silver-mounted, was found in a corner by the door. Neither of these articles, the caretaker testified in the most positive manner, had belonged to Wingrove. Finally, the verdict had been, “Wilful murder against some person or persons unknown.” There was a description of Wingrove. Joan read it eagerly: “Above the average height, dark-complexioned, brown beard and moustache, light eyes. When last seen was wearing a dark grey suit and a panama hat.”
There was a leading article on the murder after the inquest, deploring the inefficiency of our police system in the usual ponderous style, advocating the use of bloodhounds in every case directly a crime was discovered, pointing out that young women who allowed themselves to be led into a clandestine friendship, to pay clandestine visits to men such as Wingrove, exposed themselves to serious danger.
Then two days later the paper gave prominence to the headline “Sensational discovery in the Grove Street Mystery.”
Wingrove’s studio coat had been examined, and the pockets had been found to be empty, but later on one of the detectives engaged on the case had felt a piece of paper in the lining. It proved to be a note or part of a note, for it had been torn across and the upper portion was missing. What could be read was: “Be with you not later than four on Monday. Everything is ready. It seems to me that there can be nothing further to wait for. From your own Queenie.”
Apparently it was presumed that it was written to Wingrove by the murdered girl, but, beyond establishing the fact that her presence in the studio—if she were indeed the writer—was not an accident, it in no way helped to clear up the various points that were puzzling the detectives. The girl’s identity, Wingrove’s personality, his present whereabouts, the mystery surrounding them remained as impenetrable as ever.
Joan went on with the examination. The allusions to the Grove Street murder grew less frequent; there were rumours of trouble in the Far East; a General Election was impending. The papers had no more space to waste over the unknown girl who had been done to death in Grove Street.
Joan laid the papers together arid stood up. Her limbs felt cramped and stiff as she moved to the door; she had spent longer than she thought on that hard, uncomfortable chair. She felt giddy. After all, what had she learned? That that horror of her childhood was a ghastly reality certainly, but the question that had tormented her through the long hours of the night remained unanswered.
She left the Museum and walked through the quiet old Bloomsbury streets and squares, asking herself again whether it was possible that she should recognize a man whom she had only seen for a few brief seconds, under such different conditions, ten years ago. She knew that in other circumstances she would not have been inclined to place reliance on such a recognition, but in her own case the whole scene had been so imprinted upon her memory that she fancied she could recall it precisely as it happened, correct in every detail. Even the grey eyes of the man who had looked at her for a moment over the window-sill—were they the same eyes that had met hers last night in the library at the Towers? She shivered as she drew her veil more closely over her face. As she neared the noise and bustle of Oxford Street she paused, regardless of the passers-by. It was ten years since the tragedy occurred; in all those years was it not possible—nay, was it not most probable—that something had been discovered, that the murderer had been arrested even if for the time he had managed to evade justice?
She went; on again, walking with quick, uneven steps, turning along Oxford Street to the right, heedless alike of the tempting display in the shop windows, of the jostling of the passers-by.
At Tottenham Court Road she had perforce to wait while a great stream of traffic passed her. On the other side of the street there was a motor-bus waiting. Seeing her glance the conductor vociferated loudly, “Bond Street, Marble Arch, Queen’s Road.” The words recalled a thousand memories. Grove Street lay not far from the Marble Arch at the back of Hinton Square. She had a fancy that if she got out at Marble Arch she could find her way to the Grove Street Mews just as she had done in her childish days. Mechanically she threaded her way across the street and seated herself in the omnibus.