CHAPTER XXXV
SUICIDE OR MURDER?
"At first there was only talk of a terrible accident, the result of someinexplicable carelessness which perhaps the evidence at the inquestwould help to elucidate.
"Medical assistance came too late; the unfortunate woman was indeeddead, frozen to death, inside her own room. Further examination showedthat she had received a severe blow at the back of the head, which musthave stunned her and caused her to fall, helpless, beside the openwindow. Temperature at five degrees below zero had done the rest.Detective Inspector Howell discovered close to the window a wrought-irongas bracket, the height of which corresponded exactly with the bruise atthe back of Mrs. Owen's head.
"Hardly however had a couple of days elapsed when public curiosity waswhetted by a few startling headlines, such as the halfpenny eveningpapers alone know how to concoct.
"'The mysterious death in Percy Street.' 'Is it Suicide or Murder?''Thrilling details--Strange developments.' 'Sensational Arrest.'
"What had happened was simply this:
"At the inquest a few certainly very curious facts connected with Mrs.Owen's life had come to light, and this had led to the apprehension of ayoung man of very respectable parentage on a charge of being concernedin the tragic death of the unfortunate caretaker.
"To begin with, it happened that her life, which in an ordinary wayshould have been very monotonous and regular, seemed, at any ratelatterly, to have been more than usually chequered and excited. Everywitness who had known her in the past concurred in the statement thatsince October last a great change had come over the worthy and honestwoman.
"I happen to have a photo of Mrs. Owen as she was before this greatchange occurred in her quiet and uneventful life, and which led, as faras the poor soul was concerned, to such disastrous results.
"Here she is to the life," added the funny creature, placing the photobefore Polly--"as respectable, as stodgy, as uninteresting as it is wellpossible for a member of your charming sex to be; not a face, you willadmit, to lead any youngster to temptation or to induce him to commit acrime.
"Nevertheless one day all the tenants of the Rubens Studios weresurprised and shocked to see Mrs. Owen, quiet, respectable Mrs. Owen,sallying forth at six o'clock in the afternoon, attired in anextravagant bonnet and a cloak trimmed with imitation astrakhanwhich--slightly open in front--displayed a gold locket and chain ofastonishing proportions.
"Many were the comments, the hints, the bits of sarcasm levelled at theworthy woman by the frivolous confraternity of the brush.
"The plot thickened when from that day forth a complete change came overthe worthy caretaker of the Rubens Studios. While she appeared day afterday before the astonished gaze of the tenants and the scandalized looksof the neighbours, attired in new and extravagant dresses, her work washopelessly neglected, and she was always 'out' when wanted.
"There was, of course, much talk and comment in various parts of theRubens Studios on the subject of Mrs. Owen's 'dissipations.' The tenantsbegan to put two and two together, and after a very little while thegeneral consensus of opinion became firmly established that the honestcaretaker's demoralisation coincided week for week, almost day for day,with young Greenhill's establishment in No. 8 Studio.
"Every one had remarked that he stayed much later in the evening thanany one else, and yet no one presumed that he stayed for purposes ofwork. Suspicions soon rose to certainty when Mrs. Owen and ArthurGreenhill were seen by one of the glass workmen dining together atGambia's Restaurant in Tottenham Court Road.
"The workman, who was having a cup of tea at the counter, noticedparticularly that when the bill was paid the money came out of Mrs.Owen's purse. The dinner had been sumptuous--veal cutlets, a cut fromthe joint, dessert, coffee and liqueurs. Finally the pair left therestaurant apparently very gay, young Greenhill smoking a choice cigar.
"Irregularities such as these were bound sooner or later to come to theears and eyes of Mr. Allman, the landlord of the Rubens Studios; and amonth after the New Year, without further warning, he gave her a week'snotice to quit his house.
"'Mrs. Owen did not seem the least bit upset when I gave her notice,'Mr. Allman declared in his evidence at the inquest; 'on the contrary,she told me that she had ample means, and had only worked latterly forthe sake of something to do. She added that she had plenty of friendswho would look after her, for she had a nice little pile to leave to anyone who would know how "to get the right side of her."'
"Nevertheless, in spite of this cheerful interview, Miss Bedford, thetenant of No. 6 Studio, had stated that when she took her key to thecaretaker's room at 6.30 that afternoon she found Mrs. Owen in tears.The caretaker refused to be comforted, nor would she speak of hertrouble to Miss Bedford.
"Twenty-four hours later she was found dead.
"The coroner's jury returned an open verdict, and Detective-InspectorJones was charged by the police to make some inquiries about young Mr.Greenhill, whose intimacy with the unfortunate woman had beenuniversally commented upon.
"The detective, however, pushed his investigations as far as theBirkbeck Bank. There he discovered that after her interview with Mr.Allman, Mrs. Owen had withdrawn what money she had on deposit, someL800, the result of twenty-five years' saving and thrift.
"But the immediate result of Detective-Inspector Jones's labours wasthat Mr. Arthur Greenhill, lithographer, was brought before themagistrate at Bow Street on the charge of being concerned in the deathof Mrs. Owen, caretaker of the Rubens Studios, Percy Street.
"Now that magisterial inquiry is one of the few interesting ones which Ihad the misfortune to miss," continued the man in the corner, with anervous shake of the shoulders. "But you know as well as I do how theattitude of the young prisoner impressed the magistrate and police sounfavourably that, with every new witness brought forward, his positionbecame more and more unfortunate.
"Yet he was a good-looking, rather coarsely built young fellow, withone of those awful Cockney accents which literally make one jump. But helooked painfully nervous, stammered at every word spoken, and repeatedlygave answers entirely at random.
"His father acted as lawyer for him, a rough-looking elderly man, whohad the appearance of a common country attorney rather than of a Londonsolicitor.
"The police had built up a fairly strong case against the lithographer.Medical evidence revealed nothing new: Mrs. Owen had died from exposure,the blow at the back of the head not being sufficiently serious to causeanything but temporary disablement. When the medical officer had beencalled in, death had intervened for some time; it was quite impossibleto say how long, whether one hour or five or twelve.
"The appearance and state of the room, when the unfortunate woman wasfound by Mr. Charles Pitt, were again gone over in minute detail. Mrs.Owen's clothes, which she had worn during the day, were folded neatly ona chair. The key of her cupboard was in the pocket of her dress. Thedoor had been slightly ajar, but both the windows were wide open; one ofthem, which had the sash-line broken, had been fastened up mostscientifically with a piece of rope.
"Mrs. Owen had obviously undressed preparatory to going to bed, and themagistrate very naturally soon made the remark how untenable the theoryof an accident must be. No one in their five senses would undress with atemperature at below zero, and the windows wide open.
"After these preliminary statements the cashier of the Birkbeck wascalled and he related the caretaker's visit at the bank.
"'It was then about one o'clock,' he stated. 'Mrs. Owen called andpresented a cheque to self for L827, the amount of her balance. Sheseemed exceedingly happy and cheerful, and talked about needing plentyof cash, as she was going abroad to join her nephew, for whom she wouldin future keep house. I warned her about being sufficiently careful withso large a sum, and parting from it injudiciously, as women of her classare very apt to do. She laughingly declared that not only was shecareful of it in the present, but meant to be so for the far-off future,for she intended to go that very day to a lawyer's of
fice and to make awill.'
"The cashier's evidence was certainly startling in the extreme, since inthe widow's room no trace of any kind was found of any money; againstthat, two of the notes handed over by the bank to Mrs. Owen on that daywere cashed by young Greenhill on the very morning of her mysteriousdeath. One was handed in by him to the West End Clothiers Company, inpayment for a suit of clothes, and the other he changed at the PostOffice in Oxford Street.
"After that all the evidence had of necessity to be gone through againon the subject of young Greenhill's intimacy with Mrs. Owen. He listenedto it all with an air of the most painful nervousness, his cheeks werepositively green, his lips seemed dry and parched, for he repeatedlypassed his tongue over them, and when Constable E 18 deposed that at 2a.m. on the morning of February 2nd he had seen the accused and spokento him at the corner of Percy Street and Tottenham Court Road, youngGreenhill all but fainted.
"The contention of the police was that the caretaker had been murderedand robbed during that night before she went to bed, that youngGreenhill had done the murder, seeing that he was the only person knownto have been intimate with the woman, and that it was, moreover, provedunquestionably that he was in the immediate neighbourhood of the RubensStudios at an extraordinarily late hour of the night.
"His own account of himself, and of that same night, could certainly notbe called very satisfactory. Mrs. Owen was a relative of his latemother's, he declared. He himself was a lithographer by trade, with agood deal of time and leisure on his hands. He certainly had employedsome of that time in taking the old woman to various places ofamusement. He had on more than one occasion suggested that she shouldgive up menial work, and come and live with him, but, unfortunately, shewas a great deal imposed upon by her nephew, a man of the name of Owen,who exploited the good-natured woman in every possible way, and who hadon more than one occasion made severe attacks upon her savings at theBirkbeck Bank.
"Severely cross-examined by the prosecuting counsel about this supposedrelative of Mrs. Owen, Greenhill admitted that he did not know him--had,in fact, never seen him. He knew that his name was Owen and that wasall. His chief occupation consisted in sponging on the kind-hearted oldwoman, but he only went to see her in the evenings, when he presumablyknew that she would be alone, and invariably after all the tenants ofthe Rubens Studios had left for the day.
"I don't know whether at this point it strikes you at all, as it didboth magistrate and counsel, that there was a direct contradiction inthis statement and the one made by the cashier of the Birkbeck on thesubject of his last conversation with Mrs. Owen. 'I am going abroad tojoin my nephew, for whom I am going to keep house,' was what theunfortunate woman had said.
"Now Greenhill, in spite of his nervousness and at times contradictoryanswers, strictly adhered to his point, that there was a nephew inLondon, who came frequently to see his aunt.
"Anyway, the sayings of the murdered woman could not be taken asevidence in law. Mr. Greenhill senior put the objection, adding: 'Theremay have been two nephews,' which the magistrate and the prosecutionwere bound to admit.
"With regard to the night immediately preceding Mrs. Owen's death,Greenhill stated that he had been with her to the theatre, had seen herhome, and had had some supper with her in her room. Before he left her,at 2 a.m., she had of her own accord made him a present of L10, saying:'I am a sort of aunt to you, Arthur, and if you don't have it, Bill issure to get it.'
"She had seemed rather worried in the early part of the evening, butlater on she cheered up.
"'Did she speak at all about this nephew of hers or about her moneyaffairs? asked the magistrate.
"Again the young man hesitated, but said, 'No! she did not mentioneither Owen or her money affairs.'
"If I remember rightly," added the man in the corner, "for recollect Iwas not present, the case was here adjourned. But the magistrate wouldnot grant bail. Greenhill was removed looking more dead thanalive--though every one remarked that Mr. Greenhill senior lookeddetermined and not the least worried. In the course of his examinationon behalf of his son, of the medical officer and one or two otherwitnesses, he had very ably tried to confuse them on the subject of thehour at which Mrs. Owen was last known to be alive.
"He made a very great point of the fact that the usual morning's workwas done throughout the house when the inmates arrived. Was itconceivable, he argued, that a woman would do that kind of workovernight, especially as she was going to the theatre, and thereforewould wish to dress in her smarter clothes? It certainly was a very nicepoint levelled against the prosecution, who promptly retorted: Just asconceivable as that a woman in those circumstances of life should,having done her work, undress beside an open window at nine o'clock inthe morning with the snow beating into the room.
"Now it seems that Mr. Greenhill senior could produce any amount ofwitnesses who could help to prove a conclusive _alibi_ on behalf of hisson, if only some time subsequent to that fatal 2 a.m. the murderedwoman had been seen alive by some chance passer-by.
"However, he was an able man and an earnest one, and I fancy themagistrate felt some sympathy for his strenuous endeavours on his son'sbehalf. He granted a week's adjournment, which seemed to satisfy Mr.Greenhill completely.
"In the meanwhile the papers had talked of and almost exhausted thesubject of the mystery in Percy Street. There had been, as you no doubtknow from personal experience, innumerable arguments on the puzzlingalternatives:--
"Accident?
"Suicide?
"Murder?
"A week went by, and then the case against young Greenhill was resumed.Of course the court was crowded. It needed no great penetration toremark at once that the prisoner looked more hopeful, and his fatherquite elated.
"Again a great deal of minor evidence was taken, and then came the turnof the defence. Mr. Greenhill called Mrs. Hall, confectioner, of PercyStreet, opposite the Rubens Studios. She deposed that at 8 o'clock inthe morning of February 2nd, while she was tidying her shop window, shesaw the caretaker of the Studios opposite, as usual, on her knees, herhead and body wrapped in a shawl, cleaning her front steps. Her husbandalso saw Mrs. Owen, and Mrs. Hall remarked to her husband how thankfulshe was that her own shop had tiled steps, which did not need scrubbingon so cold a morning.
"Mr. Hall, confectioner, of the same address, corroborated thisstatement, and Mr. Greenhill, with absolute triumph, produced a thirdwitness, Mrs. Martin, of Percy Street, who from her window on the secondfloor had, at 7.30 a.m., seen the caretaker shaking mats outside herfront door. The description this witness gave of Mrs. Owen's get-up,with the shawl round her head, coincided point by point with that givenby Mr. and Mrs. Hall.
"After that Mr. Greenhill's task became an easy one; his son was at homehaving his breakfast at 8 o'clock that morning--not only himself, buthis servants would testify to that.
"The weather had been so bitter that the whole of that day Arthur hadnot stirred from his own fireside. Mrs. Owen was murdered after 8 a.m.on that day, since she was seen alive by three people at that hour,therefore his son could not have murdered Mrs. Owen. The police mustfind the criminal elsewhere, or else bow to the opinion originallyexpressed by the public that Mrs. Owen had met with a terrible untowardaccident, or that perhaps she may have wilfully sought her own death inthat extraordinary and tragic fashion.
"Before young Greenhill was finally discharged one or two witnesses wereagain examined, chief among these being the foreman of the glassworks.He had turned up at the Rubens Studios at 9 o'clock, and been inbusiness all day. He averred positively that he did not specially noticeany suspicious-looking individual crossing the hall that day. 'But,' heremarked with a smile, 'I don't sit and watch every one who goes up anddownstairs. I am too busy for that. The street door is always left open;any one can walk in, up or down, who knows the way.'
"That there was a mystery in connection with Mrs. Owen's death--of thatthe police have remained perfectly convinced; whether young Greenhillheld the key of that mystery or not they ha
ve never found out to thisday.
"I could enlighten them as to the cause of the young lithographer'sanxiety at the magisterial inquiry, but, I assure you, I do not care todo the work of the police for them. Why should I? Greenhill will neversuffer from unjust suspicions. He and his father alone--besidesmyself--know in what a terribly tight corner he all but found himself.
"The young man did not reach home till nearly _five_ o'clock thatmorning. His last train had gone; he had to walk, lost his way, andwandered about Hampstead for hours. Think what his position would havebeen if the worthy confectioners of Percy Street had not seen Mrs. Owen'wrapped up in a shawl, on her knees, doing the front steps.'
"Moreover, Mr. Greenhill senior is a solicitor, who has a small officein John Street, Bedford Row. The afternoon before her death Mrs. Owenhad been to that office and had there made a will by which she left allher savings to young Arthur Greenhill, lithographer. Had that will beenin other than paternal hands, it would have been proved, in the naturalcourse of such things, and one other link would have been added to thechain which nearly dragged Arthur Greenhill to the gallows--'the link ofa very strong motive.'
"Can you wonder that the young man turned livid, until such time as itwas proved beyond a doubt that the murdered woman was alive hours afterhe had reached the safe shelter of his home?
"I saw you smile when I used the word 'murdered,'" continued the man inthe corner, growing quite excited now that he was approaching the_denouement_ of his story. "I know that the public, after the magistratehad discharged Arthur Greenhill, were quite satisfied to think that themystery in Percy Street was a case of accident--or suicide."
"No," replied Polly, "there could be no question of suicide, for twovery distinct reasons."
He looked at her with some degree of astonishment. She supposed that hewas amazed at her venturing to form an opinion of her own.
"And may I ask what, in your opinion, these reasons are?" he asked verysarcastically.
"To begin with, the question of money," she said--"has any more of itbeen traced so far?"
"Not another L5 note," he said with a chuckle; "they were all cashed inParis during the Exhibition, and you have no conception how easy a thingthat is to do, at any of the hotels or smaller _agents de change_."
"That nephew was a clever blackguard," she commented.
"You believe, then, in the existence of that nephew?"
"Why should I doubt it? Some one must have existed who was sufficientlyfamiliar with the house to go about in it in the middle of the daywithout attracting any one's attention."
"In the middle of the day?" he said with a chuckle.
"Any time after 8.30 in the morning."
"So you, too, believe in the 'caretaker, wrapped up in a shawl,'cleaning her front steps?" he queried.
"But--"
"It never struck you, in spite of the training your intercourse with memust have given you, that the person who carefully did all the work inthe Rubens Studios, laid the fires and carried up the coals, merely didit in order to gain time; in order that the bitter frost might reallyand effectually do its work, and Mrs. Owen be not missed until she wastruly dead."
"But--" suggested Polly again.
"It never struck you that one of the greatest secrets of successfulcrime is to lead the police astray with regard to the time when thecrime was committed. That was, if you remember, the great point in theRegent's Park murder.
"In this case the 'nephew,' since we admit his existence, would--even ifhe were ever found, which is doubtful--be able to prove as good an_alibi_ as young Greenhill."
"But I don't understand--"
"How the murder was committed?" he said eagerly. "Surely you can see itall for yourself, since you admit the 'nephew'--a scamp, perhaps--whosponges on the good-natured woman. He terrorises and threatens her, somuch so that she fancies her money is no longer safe even in theBirkbeck Bank. Women of that class are apt at times to mistrust the Bankof England. Anyway, she withdraws her money. Who knows what she meant todo with it in the immediate future?
"In any case, she wishes to secure it after her death to a young manwhom she likes, and who has known how to win her good graces. Thatafternoon the nephew begs, entreats for more money; they have a row; thepoor woman is in tears, and is only temporarily consoled by a pleasantvisit at the theatre.
"At 2 o'clock in the morning young Greenhill parts from her. Two minuteslater the nephew knocks at the door. He comes with a plausible tale ofhaving missed his last train, and asks for a 'shake down' somewhere inthe house. The good-natured woman suggests a sofa in one of the studios,and then quietly prepares to go to bed. The rest is very simple andelementary. The nephew sneaks into his aunt's room, finds her standingin her nightgown; he demands money with threats of violence; terrified,she staggers, knocks her head against the gas bracket, and falls on thefloor stunned, while the nephew seeks for her keys and takes possessionof the L800. You will admit that the subsequent _mise en scene_--isworthy of a genius.
"No struggle, not the usual hideous accessories round a crime. Only theopen windows, the bitter north-easterly gale, and the heavily fallingsnow--two silent accomplices, as silent as the dead.
"After that the murderer, with perfect presence of mind, busies himselfin the house, doing the work which will ensure that Mrs. Owen shall notbe missed, at any rate, for some time. He dusts and tidies; some fewhours later he even slips on his aunt's skirt and bodice, wraps hishead in a shawl, and boldly allows those neighbours who are astir to seewhat they believe to be Mrs. Owen. Then he goes back to her room,resumes his normal appearance and quietly leaves the house."
"He may have been seen."
"He undoubtedly _was_ seen by two or three people, but no one thoughtanything of seeing a man leave the house at that hour. It was very cold,the snow was falling thickly, and as he wore a muffler round the lowerpart of his face, those who saw him would not undertake to know himagain."
"That man was never seen nor heard of again?" Polly asked.
"He has disappeared off the face of the earth. The police are searchingfor him, and perhaps some day they will find him--then society will berid of one of the most ingenious men of the age."
CHAPTER XXXVI
THE END
He had paused, absorbed in meditation. The young girl also was silent.Some memory too vague as yet to take a definite form was persistentlyhaunting her--one thought was hammering away in her brain, and playinghavoc with her nerves. That thought was the inexplicable feeling withinher that there was something in connection with that hideous crime whichshe ought to recollect, something which--if she could only remember whatit was--would give her the clue to the tragic mystery, and for onceensure her triumph over this self-conceited and sarcastic scarecrow inthe corner.
He was watching her through his great bone-rimmed spectacles, and shecould see the knuckles of his bony hands, just above the top of thetable, fidgeting, fidgeting, fidgeting, till she wondered if thereexisted another set of fingers in the world which could undo the knotshis lean ones made in that tiresome piece of string.
Then suddenly--_a propos_ of nothing, Polly _remembered_--the wholething stood before her, short and clear like a vivid flash oflightning:--Mrs. Owen lying dead in the snow beside her open window; oneof them with a broken sash-line, tied up most scientifically with apiece of string. She remembered the talk there had been at the timeabout this improvised sash-line.
That was after young Greenhill had been discharged, and the question ofsuicide had been voted an impossibility.
Polly remembered that in the illustrated papers photographs appeared ofthis wonderfully knotted piece of string, so contrived that the weightof the frame could but tighten the knots, and thus keep the window open.She remembered that people deduced many things from that improvisedsash-line, chief among these deductions being that the murderer was asailor--so wonderful, so complicated, so numerous were the knots whichsecured that window-frame.
But Polly knew better. In her mind's eye she saw t
hose fingers, rendereddoubly nervous by the fearful cerebral excitement, grasping at firstmechanically, even thoughtlessly, a bit of twine with which to securethe window; then the ruling habit strongest through all, the girl couldsee it; the lean and ingenious fingers fidgeting, fidgeting with thatpiece of string, tying knot after knot, more wonderful, morecomplicated, than any she had yet witnessed.
"If I were you," she said, without daring to look into that cornerwhere he sat, "I would break myself of the habit of perpetually makingknots in a piece of string."
He did not reply, and at last Polly ventured to look up--the corner wasempty, and through the glass door beyond the desk, where he had justdeposited his few coppers, she saw the tails of his tweed coat, hisextraordinary hat, his meagre, shrivelled-up personality, fastdisappearing down the street.
Miss Polly Burton (of the _Evening Observer_) was married the other dayto Mr. Richard Frobisher (of the _London Mail_). She has never set eyeson the man in the corner from that day to this.
FINIS
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