MR. HEWLETT, the detective, picked his way cautiously over the cobbled streets of Willersfield, wincing now and then as a stone made itself felt through his thin, town-made boots.
“That will be the Bell, I suppose,” he soliloquized, as, following his directions, he turned down the street to his right.
The Bell it proved to be, as the sign testified; apparently the licence had not been transferred to the widow—the board still bore the name of John Spencer. Mr. Hewlett looked at it for a moment; then he stepped inside the passage and put his head in at the bar. A stout, red-faced woman sat at the other side, knitting.
Rightly concluding her to be Mrs. Spencer, Hewlett advanced.
“Good morning, ma’am! I’ll take a glass of your ale, if you please. It’s a hot morning.”
“It is, sir,” answered the woman in a dejected tone. Mr. Hewlett fancied she had been crying. He looked at her sympathetically as she drew the ale.
“You’ll do me the favour of having a drop of something yourself, ma’am, I hope. You’ve had trouble here of late I know; and you look as if it had told upon you if I may say so.”
Mrs. Spencer drew out a handkerchief and applied it to her eyes.
“Yes, it is nothing but trouble I have had of late, sir! I might have made shift to bear it perhaps if I had had a little human sympathy and kindness shown me, but when your own flesh and blood turns against you—”
“Ah, that is bad!” Mr. Hewlett took a draught of his beer and screwed his monocle in firmly. “Now you will have that drop of brandy, ma’am; it will brace you up.”
“You are very good sir.” Mrs. Spencer did not need much pressing. “If everybody had your feeling heart—”
The detective sat down and chatted affably about the weather while she drank her brandy and water.
“Is there any room where you could give me the pleasure of a few minutes’ private conversation, Mrs. Spencer? There is a little matter I must consult you about.”
Mrs. Spencer looked surprised and flattered. Hewlett was a personable-looking man from her point of view. The thought crossed her mind that he might have heard she had been left comfortably off, and visions of a rose-coloured future, in which he bore no inconsiderable part flitted across her mind. Calling her daughter to look after the bar, she led the way into the parlour, and, pulling one of the horsehair chairs forward with a shy smile, invited the detective to be seated.
Mr. Hewlett accepted her offer with a word of thanks and deposited his hat on the mahogany centre table.
“It is a little matter of business that I have come about, Mrs. Spencer. You had two stepdaughters, I believe?”
Mrs. Spencer’s delightful visions began to fade; she cast a sharp look at Hewlett from behind her handkerchief.
“Yes, I have,” she assented, unconsciously altering the tense. “A pair of ungrateful hussies! If it is about them you want to talk, sir, you have wasted your time calling here. It is little enough I can say for either of them. And I have made it a rule when I can’t say good of folk, I won’t say bad!”
“And a very good rule too, Mrs. Spencer, a very good rule,” the detective assented, “If I ask you to make an exception in my favour, be sure it is not without reason, as you will see if you will just look at this card. That is my name, ma’am.”
Mrs. Spencer took the card somewhat gingerly.
“Mr. Thomas Hewlett from Messrs. Hewlett and Cowham, Detective Agents.”
She uttered a slight scream, and flung it from her on the floor.
“If I had known! Another of them detectives! And me thinking you were that pleasant and friendly—”
“So I am, ma’am, so I am,” Mr. Hewlett assured her. “It is only that I want a bit of help, and you are the only one that can give it me. It may be that something I have to tell you will give you a bit of a shock too, and it is well that you should hear it from me instead of reading it in the papers, where I expect it will all be to-morrow.”
Mrs. Spencer was too much agitated to take in the meaning of his words.
“If it is about that woman at Davenant Hall, I have made up my mind I won’t say another word. That Mr. Cowham—your master he is, I suppose—he pretty near frightened the wits out of me the other day.”
Mr. Hewlett smiled slightly at the reference his master.
“Ah, he is inclined to be a bit rough, is Mr. Cowham!” he said diplomatically. “As for the lady at Davenant Hall, I should not think of alluding to her again; I should put her out of my mind if I were you, ma’am. We all make mistakes sometimes. My business with you is about a very different matter. You may remember an affair that took place in Grove Street at the time that you were living in the mews behind. It made a great stir at the time. ‘The Grove Street Mystery,’ they called it. A young lady was found dead in a studio at No. 18.”
Mrs. Spencer was now alert.
“Of course I do,” dropping her handkerchief in her excitement. “I often think of it now. Quite a girl she was, and the police could not make out anything about where she come from.”
Mr. Hewlett coughed.
“They could not,” he said pointedly, “but I think some light has been cast upon the matter at last. You never had any idea who the young lady was, I suppose, Mrs. Spencer?”
The woman stared at him.
“Me, sir? How should I? I never heard a word about her except what was in the papers for everybody to read!” Her surprise at the question was evidently genuine.
The detective leaned forward.
“Mrs. Spencer, I am afraid there is no doubt, there can be no doubt”—she spoke impressively—“that the poor young girl who met her death under such mysterious circumstances was your elder stepdaughter, Evelyn.”
“What? It—it can’t be!” Mrs. Spencer’s heavy cheeks turned a mottled purple; her knees shook. “I don’t believe it! Who would have killed Evie?”
“Ah, that is, another question!” Mr. Hewlett drew nearer confidentially. “And that is where I want your help, Mrs. Spencer. As I say, it has been proved beyond question that it was Miss Evelyn Spencer who was murdered in the studio in Grove Street. Now there are two or three questions I must ask you. First, there is a photograph.” He felt in his pocket.
“It wasn’t Evie,” Mrs. Spencer said hoarsely. “No” —with a sudden gleam of recollection—“of course it could not have been Evie! Little Polly would have known her sister.”
The detective was drawing the photograph of Evelyn and the unknown man from its envelope. He stopped.
“Who is Polly?” he asked sharply; the name was new to his recollection of the case. “And what did she know, what did she see?”
“Why, I had given her a whipping for idling about and letting her brother, Tim—that is my youngest boy, sir—get into mischief, and she ran away from me and must needs get scrambling about on the roof that very afternoon, and from what she said I believe she saw the whole thing done. It wasn’t my fault the police were not told of it, ’twas her father’s. He would not have her frightened, and he said she had fancied everything about it, but I knew better. She kept me awake all that night crying out that she had seen a dead woman in white, and a dark man with a gun.”
“I must see this Polly.” The detective made, a rapid note in his pocket-book. “Her evidence may be most important. It is a serious matter that it was not brought to the notice of the police at the time. Is it possible for me to see her this morning?”
“No, sir, it isn’t! Leastways, not here, and whether she will see you at all I don’t know, for she has become very grand, has Polly, married a lord if you please, and as good as told me she washed her hands of me—at least he did!” Mrs. Spencer’s face was resuming its normal colour now. “But of course, if that girl she saw killed was Evie, it stands to reason that Polly would have known her—her own sister, and the two so devoted to one another.”
Light was breaking in upon the detective now.
“You don’t mean that it was Lady Warchester?”
Mrs. Spencer nodded.
Mr. Hewlett sat staring meditatively through the open door at the rows of pewter cups and mugs in the bar. He was thinking that, taking it all round, the Grove Street Mystery held as many astounding developments as any ordinary five cases put together. Mrs. Spencer had opined that it would have been impossible for the child not to have recognized her own sister; the detective’s thoughts went further.
After a pause, devoted apparently to cogitating over the injustice of her lot compared with that of Lady Warchester, Mrs. Spencer spoke again:
“You spoke of a photograph, sir. If it is one of poor Evie, I should be glad to see it. There was a portrait of the young lady that was murdered in the papers, I know, but neither her father nor me recognized it, if her it were, which I haven’t given in yet.”
Mr. Hewlett woke up from his abstraction.
“I am afraid there is no doubt of it, Mrs. Spencer. Lady Warchester had not seen her sister for five years before the latter’s death. If she did witness anything of the nature of what you describe, she evidently could not identify her. But you have given me something to go upon. Now with regard to this photograph”—laying it on the table beside her—“I want to find out who the man is. Can you help me?”
Mrs. Spencer bent forward curiously; then she gave a short laugh.
“Why, of course! I wonder where they had it took! There is no mistaking him. It is Jim Gregory.”
“Gregory?” repeated the detective questioningly. “Was he engaged to Miss Spencer?’’
Mrs. Spencer laughed again.
“No, bless you! There was a bit of sweethearting between them maybe, and I believe he went to see her once or twice after she left us. If her father had ever heard of it he would have given her what for; he was angry enough when he found that she had worked Gregory a tobacco-pouch.”
“Tobacco-pouch!” repeated Hewlett.
“Yes, she worked one for him! Girls are that silly!” Mrs. Spencer went on. “And her father gave her a good talking to for it. Jim Gregory came here with us you know, sir. If so be as I can keep on the Bell, he will stay on and manage like.”
“Will he?” The detective’s voice sounded absent. He gazed vacantly into the bar, where Amy had now taken her mother’s place. His mind was lost in a maze of bewilderment and conjecture. He was thinking of the soiled tobacco-pouch found by the dead girl’s body. Gregory had been Evelyn Spencer’s first sweetheart—there could be little doubt of that, but even though the acquaintance had been kept up longer Hewlett was unable to connect him with the unhappy girl’s death. Yet Grove Street was very near the Mews, and, as he knew, jealousy was the mainspring of half the tragedies he attempted to trace.
In any case, one thread of the tangled web which fate had woven round the death of Evelyn Spencer was thus placed in his hands, and he was resolved to follow it up.
“Would it be possible for me to speak to Gregory this morning, ma’am?” he inquired.
“Oh, yes!” Mrs. Spender answered cordially enough. “I expect he is somewhere about. Amy”—raising her voice—“send Tim down the yard and tell Jim he is wanted, will you? I haven’t been pleased with Jim of late,” she went on. “After that Mr. Cowham of yours had been here the other day I was that upset, just when I thought my troubles were over to have them all reaped up again, that I gave way a bit, and let out what he had said and what I had told him. Jim Gregory he was in and out of the bar and heard it all, and he went away and wrote a letter without saying a word and took it to the post himself. Tim walked up with him, and he saw it addressed to Miss Evelyn Davenant.”
Mr. Hewlett looked puzzled for a minute, then his face cleared.
“Ah, he thought it was the real Evelyn at Davenant Hall, I expect! You tell me he was a friend of hers.”
“Oh, no, he didn’t!” Mrs. Spencer contradicted belligerently. “’Twas him as first put it into my head that it wasn’t the real Evie at Davenant Hall. When Polly came over here to her father’s funeral she told us Evie were at the Hall, and I never doubted it was Evie. Why should I? I should have given Polly credit for sense enough to know her own sister. Jim Gregory it was as first set me thinking. ‘Evie is never there,’ he says. ‘’Tis somebody pretending to be her, belike; but it isn’t never Evie.’ The fool I was to listen to him! But you see, sir, he knowed, and he must take it upon him to warn that nasty madam. And she gets off scot-free, while me, as had nothing to do with her going to Davenant, never knew a word about it till afterwards, gets all the blame, and has police officers coming to question me.” She relapsed into noisy sobs once more. “I shan’t forgive Jim Gregory in a hurry, that I shan’t.”
At this juncture, the sound of heavy steps along the passage was heard. Mrs. Spencer looked up.
“Ah, here he is to speak for himself, sir! Jim”— raising her voice—“here is this gentleman, a detective, wants to speak to you about Evie. He has got a photograph.”
Hewlett got up and advanced to the half-open door. He would scarcely have identified the original of the photograph taken fifteen years earlier but for Mrs. Spencer’s assistance; time and hard living had altered Jim Gregory considerably. But the heavy jaw was there, and the closely-set eyes were regarding the detective with suspicion; then the man touched his forehead.
Hewlett held out the photograph.
“Perhaps you can tell me where this was taken?”
Gregory’s expression changed as he looked; he drew, a deep breath of relief, it seemed to Hewlett.
“Oh, that! ’Twas taken years ago, soon after Evie left home, at a little place off the Mile End Road. I forget the name. Yes, there it is, on the back of the card —‘William Wile, 10 Merton Street, off Mile End Road.’”
“Yes, there it is,” assented the detective, who had already paid a visit to Mr. Wile’s establishment without any satisfactory result. “When did you last see Miss Evelyn Spencer, Mr. Gregory?”
Gregory hesitated a moment; he passed his hand through his long hair.
“It would, maybe, be six months after she left home. She was at the Melpomene then.”
“Oh!” The detective nursed his chin in his hand reflectively.
“Jim!” Mrs. Spencer broke in. She had controlled herself with difficulty all this time. “And what do you think this gentleman has been telling me, Jim? That that young lady that was killed in Grove Street when the master was at Sir Robert Brunton’s was our Evie!”
Gregory’s face suddenly grew older, greyer.
“’Tain’t possible!” he said roughly. “Why, that young lady’s photo was in all the papers! Do you think some of us wouldn’t ha’ recognized it?”
“Ah, but it was a newspaper photograph!” The detective spoke slightingly. “Taken after death too! I don’t think there can be any doubt of her identity, Mr. Gregory. I wonder now what made you so sure that the real Evelyn Spencer was not at Davenant Hall?”
Gregory cast a quick glance from his small eyes at Mrs. Spencer, who was still emitting a convulsive sob occasionally.
“When we heard she wouldn’t come to her father’s funeral I began to have my suspicions, sir; she always thought a deal of her father, did Evie.”
“Still, as she had not written him for fifteen years I don’t see anything very astonishing in her not coming to the funeral,” the detective said. “You must have had more than that to go on, Mr. Gregory.”
Gregory twirled his cap about between his big, red hands.
“I didn’t think as what Polly—her ladyship told us about her sister sounded like Evie,” he answered slowly. “That is how I come to pass the remark to the missis as I didn’t believe it really was Evie at all. But of course I wasn’t thinking she would let it go any further, least of all that she would go down to Davenant Hall.”
“That is enough, Jim Gregory!” Mrs. Spencer interrupted him sharply. “You can let my doings alone, if you please. Mr. Hewlett wants to know why you wrote to that hussy so as to let her get off before the police come.”
“What are you talking about?” asked Gregory roughly. “You told me it was Evie, and I believed you, like a fool! When the policeman come here making inquiries it did seem to me as somebody ought to tell her, me taking it as it was Evie, as I had been told, sir”—addressing himself to the detective—“for I didn’t hear what the missis told the police.”
“If you can’t keep my name out of it, Jim Gregory—”
In Mrs. Spencer’s wrath she threatened to become apoplectic.
“You shouldn’t ha’ poked your nose into it, then!” Gregory growled.
“Well, well, it is a matter that interests all of us,” the detective interposed pacifically. “It won’t be easy for any person who knew Miss Evelyn Spencer to keep out of it, I am afraid. And you must have been a particular friend of hers, to judge by the photo, Mr. Gregory.”
The man looked down sheepishly.
“I was good enough for her till she got in with grander folk,” he muttered sulkily. “Then she give me the go-by quick enough. Is there anything more you want to ask me, sir, because I have my horses to see to?”
“Can you tell me the name of the man Miss Spencer married?” Hewlett asked.
Gregory shook his head.
“I know nothing of Evie after she left the Melpomene. There was a lot of young fellows always after her, but I don’t know as I can remember one of them. I never knew she was married.”
Mr. Hewlett smiled politely.
“Then I don’t think I need trouble you further to-day, Mr. Gregory. I should not say no to a cup of tea if you were to offer me one before I started, ma’am,” turning to Mrs. Spencer.
That good lady looked much gratified.
“I’m sure I shall be honoured, sir! Tell Amy to put the kettle on as you go out, Jim!”