“No: she was only then putting the cloth. As I turned round from taking the beer-jug from its hook, the fling she gave the cloth caused the air to whiffle in my face like a wind. She had not begun to reach out the dishes.”
“How long were you away?”
“I don’t know exactly,” she answered, with a moan. “Rather longer than usual, because I took my letter to the post before going to the Swan.”
“It was about ten minutes,” I interposed. “I was at the window next door, and saw Matilda go out and come back.”
“Ten minutes!” repeated the policeman. “Quite long enough for some ruffian to come in and fling her over the stairs.”
“But who would do it?” asked Matilda, looking up at him with her poor pale face.
“Ah, that’s the question; that’s what we must find out,” said Knapp. “Was the kitchen just as it was when you left it?”
“Yes—except that she had put the bread and cheese on the table. And the glasses, and knives,” added the girl, looking round at the said table, which remained as we had found it, “but not the plates.”
“Well now, to go to something else: Did she bring her work-basket downstairs with her from the bedroom when she remarked to you that she would go and put the supper on?”
“No, she did not.”
“You are sure of that?”
“Yes. She left the basket on the chair in front of her where it had been standing. She just got up and shook the threads from off her gown, and went on down. When I left the room the basket was there; I saw it. And I think,” added the girl, with a great sob, “I think that while laying the supper she must have gone upstairs again to fetch the basket, and must have fallen against the banisters with fright, and overbalanced herself.”
“Fright at what?” asked Knapp.
Matilda shivered. Susan whispered to him that they were afraid at night of seeing the ghost of Mr. Edmund Peahern.
The man glanced keenly at Matilda for a minute. “Did you ever see it?” he asked.
“No,” she shuddered. “But there are strange noises, and we think it is in the house.”
“Well,” said Knapp, coughing to hide a comical smile, “ghosts don’t tear pieces out of gowns—that ever I heard of. I should say it was something worse than a ghost that has been here to-night. Had this poor girl any sweetheart?”
“No,” said Matilda.
“Have you one?”
“No.”
“Except Owen the milkman.”
A red streak flashed into Matilda’s cheeks. I knew Owen: he was Mrs. Blair’s milkman also.
“I think Owen must be your sweetheart or hers,” went on Knapp. “I’ve seen him, often enough, talking and laughing with you both when bringing the afternoon’s milk round. Ten minutes at a stretch he has stayed in this garden, when he need not have been as many moments.”
“There has been no harm: and it’s nothing to anybody,” said Matilda.
The key of the front door was searched for, high and low; but it could not be found. Whoever locked the door, must have made off with the key. But for that, and for the evidences of the scuffle above and the pieces torn out of the gown, we should have thought Matilda’s opinion was correct: that Jane Cross had gone upstairs for her basket, and through some wretched accident had pitched over the balustrades. Matilda could not relinquish the notion.
“It was only a week ago that ever was—a week ago this very day—that Jane Cross nearly fell over there. We were both running upstairs, trying in sport which should get first into our bedroom; and, in jostling one another on the landing, she all but overbalanced herself. I caught hold of her to save her. It’s true—if it were the last word I had to speak.”
Matilda broke down, with a dreadful fit of sobbing. Altogether she struck me as being about as excitable a young woman as one could meet in a summer day’s journey.
Nothing more could be made out of it this evening. Jane Cross had met her death, and some evil or other must have led to it. The police took possession of the house for the night: and Matilda, out of compassion, was brought to ours. To describe the Mater’s shock and Mary Blair’s, when they heard the news, would be beyond me.
All sorts of conjectures arose in the neighbourhood. The most popular belief was that some person must have perceived the front door open, and, whether with a good or a bad intention, entered the house; that he must have stolen upstairs, met Jane Cross on the top landing, and flung her down in a scuffle. That he must then have let himself out at the front door and locked it after him.
Against this theory there were obstacles. From the time of Matilda’s leaving the house till her return, certainly not more than ten minutes had elapsed, perhaps not quite as much, and this was a very short space of time for what had been done in it. Moreover the chances were that I, sitting at the next window, should have seen any one going in or out; though it was not of course certain. I had got up once to ring the bell, and stayed a minute or two away from the window, talking with Mary Blair and the Mater.
Some people thought the assassin (is it too much to call him so?) had been admitted by Jane Cross herself; or he might have been in hiding in the garden before she locked the door. In short, the various opinions would fill a volume.
But suspicion fell chiefly upon one person—and that was Thomas Owen the milkman. Though, perhaps, “suspicion” is too strong a word to give to it—I ought rather to say “doubt.” These Owens were originally from Wales, very respectable people. The milk business was their own; and, since the father’s death, which happened only a few months before, the son had carried it on in conjunction with his mother. He was a young man of three or four and twenty, with a fresh colour and open countenance, rather superior in manners and education. The carrying out the milk himself was a temporary arrangement, the boy employed for it being ill. That he had often lingered at No. 7, laughing with the two young women, was well known; he had also been seen to accost them in the street. Only the previous day, he and Matilda had stayed talking in the churchyard after morning service when everybody else had left it; and he had walked up nearly as far as Seaboard Terrace with Jane Cross in the evening. A notion existed that he had entered the house on the Monday evening, for who else was it likely to have been, cried everybody. Which was, of course, logic. At last a rumour arose—arose on the Tuesday—that Owen had been seen to leave the house at dusk on the fatal evening; that this could be proved. If so, it looked rather black. I was startled, for I had liked the man.
The next day, Wednesday, the key was found. A gardener who did up the gardens of the other end house, No. 1, every Wednesday, was raking the ground underneath some dwarf pines that grew close against the front railings, and raked out a big door-key. About a dozen people came rushing off with it to No. 7.
It was the missing key. It fitted into the door at once, locked and unlocked it. When the villain had made his way from the house after doing the mischief, he must have flung the key over amidst the pines, thinking no doubt it would lie hidden there.
The coroner and jury assembled; but they could not make more of the matter than we had made. Jane Cross had died of the fall down the well-staircase, which had broken her neck; and it was pretty evident she had been flung down. Beyond the one chief and fatal injury, she was not harmed in any way; not by so much as a scratch. Matilda, whose surname turned out to be Valentine, having got over the first shock, gave her testimony with subdued composure. She was affected at parts of it, and said she would have saved Jane Cross’s life with her own: and no one could doubt that she spoke the truth. She persisted in asserting her opinion that there had been no scuffle, in spite of appearances; but that the girl had been terrified in some way and had accidentally fallen over.
When Matilda was done with, Thomas Owen took her place. He was all in black, having dressed himself to come to the inquest and wearing mourning