Looking at these women, Mrs. Bunting wondered vaguely which was which. Was it that rather draggle-tailed-looking young person who had certainly, or almost certainly, seen The Avenger within ten seconds of the double crime being committed? The woman who, aroused by one of his victims’ cry of terror, had rushed to her window and seen the murderer’s shadowy form pass swiftly by in the fog?
Yet another woman, so Mrs. Bunting now remembered, had given a most circumstantial account of what The Avenger looked like, for he, it was supposed, had actually brushed by her as he passed.
Those two women now before her had been interrogated and cross-examined again and again, not only by the police, but by representatives of every newspaper in London. It was from what they had both said—unluckily their accounts materially differed—that that official description of The Avenger had been worked up—that which described him as being a good-looking, respectable young fellow of twenty-eight, carrying a newspaper parcel.
As for the third woman, she was doubtless an acquaintance, a boon companion of the dead.
Mrs. Bunting looked away from the witnesses, and focused her gaze on another unfamiliar sight. Specially prominent, running indeed through the whole length of the shut-in space, that is, from the coroner’s high dais right across to the opening in the wooden barrier, was an ink-splashed table at which, when she had first taken her place, there had been sitting three men busily sketching; but now every seat at the table was occupied by tired, intelligent-looking men, each with a notebook, or with some loose sheets of paper, before him.
“Them’s the reporters,” whispered her friend. “They don’t like coming till the last minute, for they has to be the last to go. At an ordinary inquest there are only two—maybe three—attending, but now every paper in the kingdom has pretty well applied for a pass to that reporters’ table.”
He looked consideringly down into the well of the court. “Now let me see what I can do for you—”
Then he beckoned to the coroner’s officer: “Perhaps you could put this lady just over there, in a corner by herself? Related to a relation of the deceased, but doesn’t want to be—” He whispered a word or two, and the other nodded sympathetically, and looked at Mrs. Bunting with interest. “I’ll put her just here,” he muttered. “There’s no one coming there today. You see, there are only seven witnesses—sometimes we have a lot more than that.”
And he kindly put her on a now empty bench opposite to where the seven witnesses stood and sat with their eager, set faces, ready —aye, more than ready—to play their part.
For a moment every eye in the court was focused on Mrs. Bunting, but soon those who had stared so hungrily, so intently, at her, realised that she had nothing to do with the case. She was evidently there as a spectator, and, more fortunate than most, she had a “friend at court,” and so was able to sit comfortably, instead of having to stand in the crowd.
But she was not long left in isolation. Very soon some of the important-looking gentlemen she had seen downstairs came into the court, and were ushered over to her seat while two or three among them, including the famous writer whose face was so familiar that it almost seemed to Mrs. Bunting like that of a kindly acquaintance, were accommodated at the reporters’ table.
“Gentlemen, the Coroner.”
The jury stood up, shuffling their feet, and then sat down again; over the spectators there fell a sudden silence.
And then what immediately followed recalled to Mrs. Bunting, for the first time, that informal little country inquest of long ago.
First came the “Oyez! Oyez!” the old Norman–French summons to all whose business it is to attend a solemn inquiry into the death —sudden, unexplained, terrible—of a fellow-being.
The jury—there were fourteen of them—all stood up again. They raised their hands and solemnly chanted together the curious words of their oath.
Then came a quick, informal exchange of sentences ’twixt the coroner and his officer.
Yes, everything was in order. The jury had viewed the bodies—he quickly corrected himself—the body, for, technically speaking, the inquest just about to be held only concerned one body.
And then, amid a silence so absolute that the slightest rustle could be heard through the court, the coroner—a clever-looking gentleman, though not so old as Mrs. Bunting thought he ought to have been to occupy so important a position on so important a day—gave a little history, as it were, of the terrible and mysterious Avenger crimes.
He spoke very clearly, warming to his work as he went on.
He told them that he had been present at the inquest held on one of The Avenger’s former victims. “I only went through professional curiosity,” he threw in by way of parenthesis, “little thinking, gentlemen, that the inquest on one of these unhappy creatures would ever be held in my court.”
On and on, he went, though he had, in truth, but little to say, and though that little was known to every one of his listeners.
Mrs. Bunting heard one of the older gentlemen sitting near her whisper to another: “Drawing it out all he can; that’s what he’s doing. Having the time of his life, evidently!” And then the other whispered back, so low that she could only just catch the words, “Aye, aye. But he’s a good chap—I knew his father; we were at school together. Takes his job very seriously, you know—he does today, at any rate.”
She was listening intently, waiting for a word, a sentence, which would relieve her hidden terrors, or, on the other hand, confirm them. But the word, the sentence, was never uttered.
And yet, at the very end of his long peroration, the coroner did throw out a hint which might mean anything—or nothing.
“I am glad to say that we hope to obtain such evidence today as will in time lead to the apprehension of the miscreant who has committed, and is still committing, these terrible crimes.”
Mrs. Bunting stared uneasily up into the coroner’s firm, determined-looking face. What did he mean by that? Was there any new evidence—evidence of which Joe Chandler, for instance, was ignorant? And, as if in answer to the unspoken question, her heart gave a sudden leap, for a big, burly man had taken his place in the witness-box—a policeman who had not been sitting with the other witnesses.
But soon her uneasy terror became stilled. This witness was simply the constable who had found the first body. In quick, business-like tones he described exactly what had happened to him on that cold, foggy morning ten days ago. He was shown a plan, and he marked it slowly, carefully, with a thick finger. That was the exact place —no, he was making a mistake—that was the place where the other body had lain. He explained apologetically that he had got rather mixed up between the two bodies—that of Johanna Cobbett and Sophy Hurtle.
And then the coroner intervened authoritatively: “For the purpose of this inquiry,” he said, “we must, I think, for a moment consider the two murders together.”
After that, the witness went on far more comfortably; and as he proceeded, in a quick monotone, the full and deadly horror of The Avenger’s acts came over Mrs. Bunting in a great seething flood of sick fear and—and, yes, remorse.
Up to now she had given very little thought—if, indeed, any thought —to the drink-sodden victims of The Avenger. It was he who had filled her thoughts,—he and those who were trying to track him down. But now? Now she felt sick and sorry she had come here today. She wondered if she would ever be able to get the vision the policeman’s words had conjured up out of her mind—out of her memory.
And then there came an eager stir of excitement and of attention throughout the whole court, for the policeman had stepped down out of the witness-box, and one of the women