CHAPTER XXXIV
THE MYSTERIOUS DEATH IN PERCY STREET
Miss Polly Burton had had many an argument with Mr. Richard Frobisherabout that old man in the corner, who seemed far more interesting anddeucedly more mysterious than any of the crimes over which hephilosophised.
Dick thought, moreover, that Miss Polly spent more of her leisure timenow in that A.B.C. shop than she had done in his own company before, andtold her so, with that delightful air of sheepish sulkiness which themale creature invariably wears when he feels jealous and won't admit it.
Polly liked Dick to be jealous, but she liked that old scarecrow in theA.B.C. shop very much too, and though she made sundry vague promisesfrom time to time to Mr. Richard Frobisher, she nevertheless driftedback instinctively day after day to the tea-shop in Norfolk Street,Strand, and stayed there sipping coffee for as long as the man in thecorner chose to talk.
On this particular afternoon she went to the A.B.C. shop with a fixedpurpose, that of making him give her his views of Mrs. Owen's mysteriousdeath in Percy Street.
The facts had interested and puzzled her. She had had countlessarguments with Mr. Richard Frobisher as to the three great possiblesolutions of the puzzle--"Accident, Suicide, Murder?"
"Undoubtedly neither accident nor suicide," he said dryly.
Polly was not aware that she had spoken. What an uncanny habit thatcreature had of reading her thoughts!
"You incline to the idea, then, that Mrs. Owen was murdered. Do you knowby whom?"
He laughed, and drew forth the piece of string he always fidgeted withwhen unravelling some mystery.
"You would like to know who murdered that old woman?" he asked at last.
"I would like to hear your views on the subject," Polly replied.
"I have no views," he said dryly. "No one can know who murdered thewoman, since no one ever saw the person who did it. No one can give thefaintest description of the mysterious man who alone could havecommitted that clever deed, and the police are playing a game of blindman's buff."
"But you must have formed some theory of your own," she persisted.
It annoyed her that the funny creature was obstinate about this point,and she tried to nettle his vanity.
"I suppose that as a matter of fact your original remark that 'there areno such things as mysteries' does not apply universally. There is amystery--that of the death in Percy Street, and you, like the police,are unable to fathom it."
He pulled up his eyebrows and looked at her for a minute or two.
"Confess that that murder was one of the cleverest bits of workaccomplished outside Russian diplomacy," he said with a nervous laugh."I must say that were I the judge, called upon to pronounce sentence ofdeath on the man who conceived that murder, I could not bring myself todo it. I would politely request the gentleman to enter our ForeignOffice--we have need of such men. The whole _mise en scene_ was trulyartistic, worthy of its _milieu_--the Rubens Studios in Percy Street,Tottenham Court Road.
"Have you ever noticed them? They are only studios by name, and aremerely a set of rooms in a corner house, with the windows slightlyenlarged, and the rents charged accordingly in consideration of thatadditional five inches of smoky daylight, filtering through dustywindows. On the ground floor there is the order office of some stainedglass works, with a workshop in the rear, and on the first floor landinga small room allotted to the caretaker, with gas, coal, and fifteenshillings a week, for which princely income she is deputed to keep tidyand clean the general aspect of the house.
"Mrs. Owen, who was the caretaker there, was a quiet, respectable woman,who eked out her scanty wages by sundry--mostly very meagre--tips doledout to her by impecunious artists in exchange for promiscuous domesticservices in and about the respective studios.
"But if Mrs. Owen's earnings were not large, they were very regular, andshe had no fastidious tastes. She and her cockatoo lived on her wages;and all the tips added up, and never spent, year after year, went toswell a very comfortable little account at interest in the BirkbeckBank. This little account had mounted up to a very tidy sum, and thethrifty widow--or old maid--no one ever knew which she was--wasgenerally referred to by the young artists of the Rubens Studios as a'lady of means.' But this is a digression.
"No one slept on the premises except Mrs. Owen and her cockatoo. Therule was that one by one as the tenants left their rooms in the eveningthey took their respective keys to the caretaker's room. She would then,in the early morning, tidy and dust the studios and the officedownstairs, lay the fire and carry up coals.
"The foreman of the glass works was the first to arrive in the morning.He had a latch-key, and let himself in, after which it was the custom ofthe house that he should leave the street door open for the benefit ofthe other tenants and their visitors.
"Usually, when he came at about nine o'clock, he found Mrs. Owen busyabout the house doing her work, and he had often a brief chat with herabout the weather, but on this particular morning of February 2nd heneither saw nor heard her. However, as the shop had been tidied and thefire laid, he surmised that Mrs. Owen had finished her work earlier thanusual, and thought no more about it. One by one the tenants of thestudios turned up, and the day sped on without any one's attention beingdrawn noticeably to the fact that the caretaker had not appeared uponthe scene.
"It had been a bitterly cold night, and the day was even worse; acutting north-easterly gale was blowing, there had been a great deal ofsnow during the night which lay quite thick on the ground, and at fiveo'clock in the afternoon, when the last glimmer of the pale winterdaylight had disappeared, the confraternity of the brush put palette andeasel aside and prepared to go home. The first to leave was Mr. CharlesPitt; he locked up his studio and, as usual, took his key into thecaretaker's room.
"He had just opened the door when an icy blast literally struck him inthe face; both the windows were wide open, and the snow and sleet werebeating thickly into the room, forming already a white carpet upon thefloor.
"The room was in semi-obscurity, and at first Mr. Pitt saw nothing, butinstinctively realizing that something was wrong, he lit a match, andsaw before him the spectacle of that awful and mysterious tragedy whichhas ever since puzzled both police and public. On the floor, alreadyhalf covered by the drifting snow, lay the body of Mrs. Owen facedownwards, in a nightgown, with feet and ankles bare, and these and herhands were of a deep purple colour; whilst in a corner of the room,huddled up with the cold, the body of the cockatoo lay stark and stiff."