For I didn’t know then I was a Psychological Phenomenon.
The Inspector smiled blandly, and pulling out his pocket-book, selected a cutting from a pile that apparently all referred to me.
“You’re mistaken,” he said, briefly. “The newspapers, on the contrary, have treated your case at great length. See, here’s the latest report. That’s clipped from last Wednesday’s Telegraph.”
I remembered then that a paragraph of just that size had been carefully cut out of Wednesday’s paper before I was allowed by Aunt Emma to read it. Aunt Emma always glanced over the paper first, indeed, and often cut out such offending paragraphs. But I never attached much importance to their absence before, because I thought it was merely a little fussy result of auntie’s good old English sense of maidenly modesty. I supposed she merely meant to spare my blushes. I knew girls were often prevented on particular days from reading the papers.
But now I seized the paragraph he handed me, and read it with deep interest. It was the very first time I had seen my own name in a printed newspaper. I didn’t know then how often it had figured there.
The paragraph was headed, “THE WOODBURY MURDER,” and it ran something like this, as well as I can remember it:
“There are still hopes that the miscreant who shot Mr. Vivian Callingham at The Grange, at Woodbury, some four years since, may be tracked down and punished at last for his cowardly crime. It will be fresh in everyone’s memory, as one of the most romantic episodes in that extraordinary tragedy, that at the precise moment of her father’s death, Miss Callingham, who was present in the room during the attack, and who alone might have been a witness capable of recognising or describing the wretched assailant, lost her reason on the spot, owing to the appalling shock to her nervous system, and remained for some months in an imbecile condition. Gradually, as we have informed our readers from time to time, Miss Callingham’s intellect has become stronger and stronger; and though she is still totally unable to remember spontaneously any events that occurred before her father’s death, it is hoped it may be possible, by describing vividly certain trains of previous incidents, to recall them in some small degree to her imperfect memory. Dr. Thornton, of Welbeck Street, who has visited her from time to time on behalf of the Treasury, in conjunction with Dr. Wade, her own medical attendant, went down to Barton-on-the-Sea on Monday, and once more examined Miss Callingham’s intellect. Though the Doctor is judiciously reticent as to the result of his visit, it is generally believed at Barton that he thinks the young lady sufficiently recovered to undergo a regular interrogatory; and in spite of the fact that Dr. Wade is opposed to any such proceeding at present, as prejudicial to the lady’s health, it is not unlikely that the Treasury may act upon their own medical official’s opinion, and send down an Inspector from Scotland Yard to make inquiries direct on the subject from Miss Callingham in person.”
My head swam round. It was all like a dream to me. I held my forehead with my hands, and gazed blankly at the Inspector.
“You understand what all this means?” he said interrogatively, leaning forward as he spoke. “You remember the murder?”
“Perfectly,” I answered him, trembling all over. “I remember every detail of it. I could describe you exactly all the objects in the room. The Picture it left behind has burned itself into my brain like a flash of lightning!”
The Inspector drew his chair nearer. “Now, Miss Callingham,” he said in a very serious voice, “that’s a remarkable expression—like a flash of lightning.’ Bear in mind, this is a matter of life and death to somebody somewhere. Somebody’s neck may depend upon your answers. Will you tell me exactly how much you remember?”
I told him in a few words precisely how the scene had imprinted itself on my memory. I recalled the room, the box, the green wires, the carpet; the man who lay dead in his blood on the floor; the man who stood poised ready to leap from the window. He let me go on unchecked till I’d finished everything I had to say spontaneously. Then he took a photograph from his pocket, which he didn’t show me. Looking at it attentively, he asked me questions, one by one, about the different things in the room at the time in very minute detail: Where exactly was the box? How did it stand relatively to the unlighted lamp? What was the position of the pistol on the floor? In which direction was my father’s head lying? Though it brought back the Horror to me in a fuller and more terrible form than ever, I answered all his questions to the very best of my ability. I could picture the whole scene like a photograph to myself; and I didn’t doubt the object he held in his hand was a photograph of the room as it appeared after the murder. He checked my statements, one by one as I went on, by reference to the photograph, murmuring half to himself now and again: “Yes, yes, exactly so”; “That’s right”; “That was so,” at each item I mentioned.
At the end of these inquiries, he paused and looked hard at me.
“Now, Miss Callingham,” he said again, peering deep into my eyes, “I want you to concentrate your mind very much, not on this Picture you carry so vividly in your own brain, but on the events that went immediately before and after it. Pause long and think. Try hard to remember. And first, you say there was a great flash of light. Now, answer me this: was it one flash alone, or had there been several?”
I stopped and racked my brain. Blank, blank, as usual.
“I can’t remember,” I faltered out, longing terribly to cry. “I can recall just that one scene, and nothing else in the world before it.”
He looked at me fixedly, jotting down a few words in his note-book as he looked. Then he spoke again, still more slowly:
“Now, try once more,” he said, with an encouraging air. “You saw this man’s back as he was getting out of the window. But can’t you remember having seen his face before? Had he a beard? a moustache? what eyes? what nose? Did you see the shot fired? And if so, what sort of person was the man who fired it?”
Again I searched the pigeon-holes of my memory in vain, as I had done a hundred times before by myself.
“It’s no use,” I cried helplessly, letting my hands drop by my side. “I can’t remember a thing, except the Picture. I don’t know whether I saw the shot fired or not. I don’t know what the murderer looked like in the face. I’ve told you all I know. I can recall nothing else. It’s all a great blank to me.”
The Inspector hesitated a moment, as if in doubt what step to take next. Then he drew himself up and said, still more gravely:
“This inability to assist us is really very singular. I had hoped, after Dr. Thornton’s report, that we might at last count with some certainty upon arriving at fresh results as to the actual murder. I can see from what you tell me you’re a young lady of intelligence—much above the average—and great strength of mind. It’s curious your memory should fail you so pointedly just where we stand most in need of its aid. Recollect, nobody else but you ever saw the murderer’s face. Now, I’m going to presume you’re answering me honestly, and try a bold means to arouse your dormant memory. Look hard, and hark back.—Is that the room you recollect? Is that the picture that still haunts and pursues you?”
He handed me the photograph he held in his fingers. I took it, all on fire. The sight almost made me turn sick with horror. To my awe and amazement, it was indeed the very scene I remembered so well. Only, of course, it was taken from another point of view, and represented things in rather different relative positions to those I figured them in. But it showed my father’s body lying dead upon the floor; it showed his poor corpse weltering helpless in its blood; it showed myself, as a girl of eighteen, standing awestruck, gazing on in blank horror at the sight; and in the background, half blurred by the summer evening light, it showed the vague outline of a man’s back, getting out of the window. On one side was the door: that formed no part of my mental picture, because it was at my back; but in the photograph it too was indistinct, as if in the very act of being burst open. The details were vague, in part—probably the picture had never been properly focussed;—but the main figures stood out with perfect clearness, and