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The Bernard's went to bed early that night, but Mrs. Bernard made up her mind to stay awake. She was determined to know when the lodger would come down into her kitchen for his experiment, and, above all, how long he would stay there.
But after a long and anxious day, she eventually fell asleep.
The church clock struck two, and suddenly Mrs. Bernard awoke. She felt sharply annoyed with herself. How could she have dropped off like that? Mr. Basset must have been down and up again hours ago!
Then, she became aware of a faint, acrid odor in the room. Elusive and intangible, it seemed to envelop her and the snoring man by her side, almost like a vapor.
Mrs. Bernard sat up in bed and sniffed; then, quietly, despite the cold, she crept out of her warm bedclothes and crawled to the bottom of the bed. There, she did a very curious thing: she leaned over the brass rail and put her face close to the hinge of the door leading into the hall. Yes, the strange, horrible odor was coming from there; it must be very strong in the passage.
As she shivered and crept back under the bedclothes, she longed to shake her sleeping husband awake and heard herself in her mind saying, “Bernard, get up! There’s something strange and dreadful going on downstairs that we ought to know about.”
But lying there by her husband's side, listening with painful intentness for the slightest sound, she knew very well that she would do nothing of the sort.
What if the lodger did make a certain amount of mess—a certain amount of smell—in her nice, clean kitchen? Was he not an almost perfect lodger? If they did anything to upset him, where could they ever hope to get another like him?
Three o'clock struck before Mrs. Bernard heard slow, heavy steps creaking up the kitchen stairs. But Mr. Basset did not go straight up to his quarters as she had expected. Instead, he went to the front door, and, opening it, put on the chain. Then he came past her door, and she thought—but could not be sure—that he sat down on the stairs.
After ten minutes or so, she heard him go down the passage again. Very softly, he closed the front door. By then, she had divined why the lodger had behaved in such a peculiar fashion. He wanted to get the strong, acrid smell of burning—was it burning wool?—out of the house.
But Mrs. Bernard, lying there in the darkness, listening to the lodger creeping upstairs, felt as if she would never get rid of the horrible odor. She felt herself to be all smell.
At last, the unhappy woman fell into a deep, troubled sleep and dreamt a most terrible and unnatural dream. Hoarse voices seemed to be shouting in her ear: "The Rose Killer close here! The Rose Killer close here!" "Horrible murder off the Edgware Road!" "The Rose Killer at his work again!"
And even in her dream, Mrs. Bernard felt angered—angered and impatient. She knew so well why she was being disturbed by this horrid nightmare! It was because of Bernard—Bernard, who could think and talk of nothing else but those frightful murders, in which only morbid and vulgar-minded people took any interest.
Why, even now, in her dream, she could hear her husband speaking to her about it: “Ellen”—so she heard Bernard murmur in her ear—“Ellen, my dear, I’m just going to get up to get a paper. It’s after seven o’clock.”
The shouting—nay, worse, the sound of tramping, hurrying feet smote on her shrinking ears. Pushing back her hair off her forehead with both hands, she sat up and listened.
It had been no nightmare, then, but something infinitely worse—reality.
Why couldn’t Bernard have lain quiet in bed a while longer and let his poor wife go on dreaming? The most awful dream would have been easier to bear than this awakening.
She heard her husband go to the front door, and as he bought the paper, he exchanged a few excited words with the newspaper-seller. Then he came back. There was a pause, and she heard him lighting the gas-ring in the sitting room.
Bernard always made his wife a cup of tea in the morning. He had promised to do this when they first married, and he had never yet broken his word. It was a small but significant gesture, and this morning, the knowledge that he was doing it brought tears to Mrs. Bernard’s pale blue eyes. This morning he seemed to be taking rather longer than usual.
When, at last, he came in with the little tray, Bernard found his wife lying with her face to the wall.
“Here’s your tea, Ellen,” he said, and there was a thrill of eager, almost happy, excitement in his voice.
She turned and sat up. “Well?” she asked. “Well? Why don’t you tell me about it?”
“I thought you were asleep,” he stammered. “I thought, Ellen, you never heard anything.”
“How could I have slept through all that din? Of course I heard. Why don’t you tell me?”
“I’ve hardly had time to glance at the paper myself,” he said slowly.
Mrs. Bernard took the paper from him, her hands trembling. As she read the headline, her breath caught in her throat: "The Rose Killer Strikes Again—Horrific Murder in Edgware Road." The room seemed to close in on her, the walls pressing down with the weight of the dreadful news.
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“You were reading it just now,” she said severely, “for I heard the rustling. You started reading before you lit the gas-ring. Don’t tell me! What were they shouting about the Edgware Road?”
“Well,” said Bernard, “since you know, I might as well tell you. The Rose Killer’s moving West—that’s what he’s doing. Last time it was King’s Cross—now it’s the Edgware Road. I said he’d come our way, and he has come our way!”
“You just go and get me that paper,” she commanded. “I want to see for myself.”
Bernard went into the next room and returned, handing her a thin, odd-looking sheet.
“Why, whatever’s this?” she asked. “This isn’t our paper!”
“Of course not,” he answered, a trifle crossly. “It’s a special early edition of the Sun, just because of The Rose Killer. Here’s the bit about it.” He showed her the exact spot. But she would have found it even by the dim light of the gas-jet now flaring over the dressing table, for the news was printed in large, clear characters:
“Once more, the murder fiend who calls himself The Rose Killer has escaped detection. While the entire attention of the police and the great army of amateur detectives was focused on the East End and King’s Cross, he moved swiftly and silently westward. And, choosing a time when the Edgware Road is at its busiest and most thronged, he committed another murder with lightning-like quickness and savagery.
“Within fifty yards of the deserted warehouse yard where he lured his victim to destruction, scores of happy, busy people were passing by, intent on their Christmas shopping. Into that cheerful throng he must have plunged within moments of committing his atrocious crime. It was only by the merest accident that the body was discovered so soon—just after midnight.
“Dr. Dowtray, who was called to the spot immediately, believes the woman had been dead for at least three hours, if not four. Initially, there was hope that this murder was unrelated to the series now puzzling and horrifying the civilized world. But no—pinned to the edge of the dead woman’s dress was the now familiar triangular piece of grey paper—the grimmest visiting card ever devised! This time, The Rose Killer has surpassed himself in audacity and daring—so cold in its maniacal fanaticism and abhorrent wickedness.”
As Mrs. Bernard read with slow, painful intentness, her husband watched her, longing yet afraid to share a new idea that was burning to be confided, even to Ellen’s unsympathetic ears.
At last, when she had finished, she looked up defiantly. “Haven’t you anything better to do than stare at me like that?” she said irritably. “Murder or no murder, I’ve got to get up! Go away—do!”
Bernard retreated to the next room.
After he left, his wife lay back and closed her eyes. She tried to think of nothing. Her will was strong and determined, and for a few moments, she actually succeeded. She felt terribly tired and weak, like someone recovering from a long, wearing illness.
Presently, detached, puerile thoughts drifted across her mind like little clouds across a summer sky. She wondered if those horrid newspaper men were allowed to shout in Belgrave Square. She wondered if Margaret, who was so unlike her brother-in-law, would get up and buy a paper. But no, Margaret was not one to leave her nice warm bed for such a silly reason.
Was it tomorrow Daisy was coming back? Yes—tomorrow, not today. Well, that was a comfort. Daisy would have amusing tales about her visit to Margaret. The girl had an excellent gift of mimicry, and Margaret, with her precise, funny ways and her perpetual talk about “the family,” lent herself to the cruel gift.
Then Mrs. Bernard’s mind wandered off to young Chandler. Love was a funny thing when you thought about it—which she, Ellen Bernard, didn’t often do. There was Jerry, a likely young fellow, seeing a lot of pretty young women—quite as pretty as Daisy and ten times more artful—and yet, he passed them all by since last summer, though you could be sure those artful minxes didn’t pass him by without giving him a thought! As Daisy wasn’t here, he would probably keep away today. There was comfort in that thought too.
Then Mrs. Bernard sat up, and memory returned in a dreadful, turgid flood. If Jerry did come in, she must brace herself to hear all the talk about The Rose Killer between him and Bernard.
Slowly she dragged herself out of bed, feeling as if she had just recovered from an illness that had left her very weak, very tired in body and soul.
She stood for a moment, listening—listening and shivering, for it was very cold. Despite the early hour, there seemed to be a lot of commotion in the Marylebone Road. She could hear the unaccustomed sounds through her closed door and tightly sealed windows. There must be a crowd of men and women, on foot and in cabs, hurrying to the scene of The Rose Killer’s latest extraordinary crime.
She heard the sudden thud of their usual morning paper falling from the letterbox onto the floor of the hall. A moment later came the sound of Bernard quickly, quietly retrieving it. She visualized him coming back, sitting down with a sigh of satisfaction by the newly-lit fire.
Languidly, she began dressing herself to the accompaniment of distant tramping and the noise of passing traffic, which increased in volume as the moments slipped by.
When Mrs. Bernard went down into her kitchen, everything looked just as she had left it, and there was no trace of the acrid smell she had expected to find there. Instead, the cavernous, whitewashed room was filled with fog, but she noticed that, though the shutters were bolted and barred as she had left them, the windows behind them had been opened wide to the air. She had left them shut.
Making a “spill” out of a twist of newspaper—she had been taught the art as a girl by one of her old mistresses—she stooped and flung open the oven door of her gas stove. As she had expected, a fierce heat had been generated there since she had last used the oven, and a mass of black, gluey soot had fallen through to the stone floor below.
Mrs. Bernard took the ham and eggs she had bought the previous day for her and Bernard’s breakfast upstairs and broiled them over the gas ring in their sitting room. Her husband watched her in surprised silence. She had never done such a thing before.
“I couldn’t stay down there,” she said. “It was so cold and foggy. I thought I’d make breakfast up here, just for today.”
“Yes,” he said kindly. “That’s quite right, Ellen. I think you’ve done quite right, my dear.”
But when it came time to eat, his wife could not touch the nice breakfast she had prepared; she only had another cup of tea.
“I’m afraid you’re ill, Ellen?” Bernard asked solicitously.
“No,” she said shortly. “I’m not ill at all. Don’t be silly! The thought of that horrible thing happening so close by has upset me and put me off my food. Just listen to them now!”
Through their closed windows penetrated the sound of scurrying feet and loud, ribald laughter. What a crowd—nay, what a mob—must be hastening busily to and from the spot where there was now nothing to be seen!
Mrs. Bernard made her husband lock the front gate. “I don’t want any of those ghouls in here!” she exclaimed angrily. Then she added, “What a lot of idle people there are in the world!”