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Mrs. Bernard slept well the night following the lodger’s mysterious experiments in her kitchen. She was so tired, so utterly exhausted, that sleep came to her the moment her head hit the pillow.
Perhaps that was why she rose so early the next morning. Hardly giving herself time to swallow the tea Bernard had made and brought her, she got up and dressed.
She had suddenly decided that the hall and staircase required a thorough cleaning, and she didn’t even wait until breakfast was over before beginning her labors. It made Bernard feel quite uncomfortable. As he sat by the fire reading his morning paper—the paper which was again of such absorbing interest—he called out, “There’s no need for so much hurry, Ellen. Daisy’ll be back today. Why don’t you wait till she’s home to help you?”
From the hall, where she was busy dusting, sweeping, and polishing, his wife’s voice came back: “Girls aren’t no good at this sort of work. Don’t you worry about me. I feel like doing an extra bit of cleaning today. I don’t like to think anyone could come in and see my place dirty.”
“No fear of that!” Bernard chuckled. Then a new thought struck him. “Aren’t you afraid of waking the lodger?” he called out.
“Mr. Basset slept most of yesterday and all last night,” she answered quickly. “As it is, I study him over-much; it’s a long, long time since I’ve done this staircase down.”
All the while she was cleaning the hall, Mrs. Bernard left the sitting-room door wide open. It was a queer thing for her to do, but Bernard didn’t like to get up and shut her out, as it were. Still, try as he might, he couldn’t read with any comfort while all that noise was going on. He had never known Ellen to make such a racket before. Once or twice he looked up and frowned rather crossly.
There came a sudden silence, and he was startled to see Ellen standing in the doorway, staring at him, doing nothing.
“Come in,” he said, “do! Aren’t you finished yet?”
“I was just resting a minute,” she said. “You don’t tell me nothing. I’d like to know if there’s anything—I mean anything new—in the paper this morning.”
She spoke in a muffled voice, almost as if she were ashamed of her unusual curiosity, and her look of fatigue, of pallor, made Bernard suddenly uneasy. “Come in—do!” he repeated sharply. “You’ve done quite enough—and before breakfast, too. It isn’t necessary. Come in and shut that door.”
He spoke authoritatively, and his wife, for a wonder, obeyed him.
She came in and did something she had never done before—she brought the broom with her and propped it up against the wall in the corner.
Then she sat down.
“I think I’ll make breakfast up here,” she said. “I—I feel cold, Bernard.” Her husband stared at her, surprised, for drops of perspiration were glistening on her forehead.
He got up. “All right. I’ll go down and bring the eggs up. Don’t you worry. For that matter, I can cook them downstairs if you like.”
“No,” she said obstinately. “I’d rather do my own work. You just bring them up here—that’ll be all right. Tomorrow morning we’ll have Daisy to help see to things.”
“Come over here and sit down comfortably in my chair,” he suggested kindly. “You never do take any bit of rest, Ellen. I’ve never seen such a woman!”
Again she got up and meekly obeyed him, walking across the room with languid steps.
He watched her anxiously, uncomfortably.
She picked up the newspaper he had just laid down, and Bernard took two steps towards her.
“I’ll show you the most interesting bit,” he said eagerly. “It’s the piece headed, ‘Our Special Investigator.’ You see, they’ve started a special investigator of their own, and he’s got hold of a lot of little facts the police seem to have overlooked. The man who writes all that—I mean the Special Investigator—was a famous detective in his time, and he’s just come out of retirement to do this bit of work for the paper. You read what he says—I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if he ends up getting that reward! One can see he just loves the work of tracking people down.”
“There’s nothing to be proud of in such a job,” said his wife listlessly.
“He’ll have something to be proud of if he catches The Rose Killer!” cried Bernard. He was too keen about the affair to be put off by Ellen’s contradictory remarks. “Just notice that bit about the rubber soles. Now, no one’s thought of that. I’ll just tell Chandler—he doesn’t seem to me to be half awake, that young man doesn’t.”
“He’s quite wide awake enough without you saying things to him! How about those eggs, Bernard? I feel quite ready for my breakfast even if you don’t.”
Mrs. Bernard now spoke in what her husband sometimes secretly described to himself as “Ellen’s snarling voice.”
He turned away and left the room, feeling oddly troubled. There was something off about her, and he couldn’t quite put his finger on it. It wasn’t the sharp and nasty tone she sometimes used; he was used to that. But now, she was so up and down, so different from what she used to be. In the old days, she had always been the same, but now a man never knew where he stood with her.
As he went downstairs, he pondered uneasily over his wife’s changed ways and mannerisms.
Take the question of his easy chair. A very small matter, no doubt, but he had never known Ellen to sit in that chair—no, not even once, for a minute—since it had been purchased by her as a present for him.
They had been so happy, so restful, during that first week after Mr. Basset had come to them. Perhaps it was the sudden, dramatic change from agonizing anxiety to peace and security that had been too much for Ellen. Yes, that was what was the matter with her, that and the universal excitement about these Rose Killer murders, which were shaking the nerves of all London. Even Bernard, unobservant as he was, had come to realize that his wife took a morbid interest in these terrible happenings. And it was all the more peculiar because at first, she had refused to discuss them and had said openly that she was utterly uninterested in murder or crime of any sort.
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He, Bernard, had always had a mild pleasure in such things. In his time, he had been a great reader of detective tales, and even now he thought there was no pleasanter reading. It was that which had first drawn him to Jerry Chandler and made him welcome the young chap as cordially as he had when they first came to London.
But though Ellen had tolerated, she had never encouraged, that sort of talk between the two men. More than once, she had exclaimed reproachfully, “To hear you two, one would think there were no nice, respectable, quiet people left in the world!”
But now all that was changed. She was as keen as anyone could be to hear the latest details of a Rose Killer crime. True, she took her own view of any theory suggested. But there! Ellen always had her own notions about everything under the sun. Ellen was a woman who thought for herself—a clever woman, not an everyday woman by any means.
While these thoughts were going disconnectedly through his mind, Bernard was breaking four eggs into a basin. He was going to give Ellen a nice little surprise—an omelette as a French chef had once taught him to make, years and years ago. He didn’t know how she would take his doing such a thing after what she had said; but never mind, she would enjoy the omelette when done. Ellen hadn’t been eating her food properly of late.
When he went up again, his wife, to his relief and surprise, took it very well. She hadn’t even noticed how long he had been downstairs, for she had been reading with intense, painful care the column that the great daily paper they took in had allotted to the one-time famous detective.
According to this Special Investigator’s account, he had discovered all sorts of things that had escaped the eye of the police and official detectives. For instance, due to a fortunate chance, he had been at the place where the two last murders had been committed very soon after the double crime had been discovered—in fact, within half an hour—and he had found, or so he felt sure, imprints of the murderer’s right foot on the slippery, wet pavement.
The paper reproduced the impression of a half-worn rubber sole. At the same time, he also admitted—because the Special Investigator was very honest, and he had a good bit of space to fill in the enterprising paper that had engaged him to probe the awful mystery—that there were thousands of rubber soles being worn in London...
When she came to that statement, Mrs. Bernard looked up, and a wan smile crossed her thin, closely-shut lips. It was quite true—that about rubber soles; there were thousands of them being worn just now. She felt grateful to the Special Investigator for having stated the fact so clearly.
The column ended with the words: “And today will take place the inquest on the double crime of ten days ago. To my mind, it would be well if a preliminary public inquiry could be held at once. Say, on the very day the discovery of a fresh murder is made. In that way alone would it be possible to weigh and sift the evidence offered by members of the general public. For when a week or more has elapsed, and these same people have been examined and cross-examined in private by the police, their impressions have had time to become blurred and hopelessly confused. On that last occasion but one there seems no doubt that several people, at any rate two women and one man, actually saw the murderer hurrying from the scene of his atrocious double crime—this being so, today’s investigation may be of the highest value and importance. Tomorrow I hope to give an account of the impression made on me by the inquest, and by any statements made during its course.”
Even when her husband had come in with the tray, Mrs. Bernard had gone on reading, only lifting her eyes for a moment. At last, he said rather crossly, “Put down that paper, Ellen, this minute! The omelet I’ve cooked for you will be just like leather if you don’t eat it.”
But once his wife had begun her breakfast—and to Bernard’s mortification, she left more than half the nice omelet untouched—she took up the paper again. She turned over the big sheets until she found, at the foot of one of the ten columns devoted to The Rose Killer and his crimes, the information she wanted, and then uttered an exclamation under her breath.
What Mrs. Bernard had been looking for—what she had finally found—was the time and place of the inquest to be held that day. The hour named was rather odd—two o’clock in the afternoon—but from Mrs. Bernard’s point of view, it was most convenient. By two o’clock, or rather by half-past one, the lodger would have had his lunch; by hurrying matters a little, she and Bernard would have had their dinner, and—Daisy wasn’t coming home until tea-time.
She got up out of her husband’s chair. “I think you’re right,” she said in a quick, hoarse tone. “I mean about me seeing a doctor, Bernard. I think I will go and see a doctor this very afternoon.”
“Wouldn’t you like me to go with you?” he asked, concern in his voice.
“No, that I wouldn’t. In fact, I wouldn’t go at all if you were to go with me.”
“All right,” he said, vexedly. “Please yourself, my dear; you know best.”
“I should think I did know best where my own health is concerned.”
Even Bernard was incensed by this lack of gratitude. “’Twas I who said long ago you ought to go and see the doctor; ’twas you who said you wouldn’t!” he exclaimed pugnaciously.
“Well, I never said you were never right, did I? At any rate, I’m going.”
“Have you a pain anywhere?” He stared at her with genuine concern on his normally phlegmatic face.
Somehow, Ellen didn’t look right, standing there opposite him. Her shoulders seemed to have shrunk; even her cheeks had sunken in a little. She had never looked so bad—not even when they had been half-starving and dreadfully overworked.
“Yes,” she said briefly, “I’ve a pain in my head, at the back of my neck. It doesn’t often leave me; it gets worse when anything upsets me, like I was upset last night by Jerry Chandler.”
“He was a silly ass to come and do a thing like that!” said Bernard crossly. “I’d a good mind to tell him so, too. But I must say, Ellen, I wonder he took you in—he didn’t fool me!”
“Well, you had no chance he should—you knew who it was,” she said slowly.
And Bernard remained silent, for Ellen was right. Jerry Chandler had already spoken when he, Bernard, came out into the hall and saw their cleverly disguised visitor.
“Those big black mustaches,” he went on complainingly, “and that black wig—why, it was ridiculous—that’s what I call it!”
“Not to anyone who didn’t know Jerry,” she retorted sharply.
“Well, I don’t know. He didn’t look like a real man—nohow. If he’s a wise lad, he won’t let our Daisy ever see him looking like that!” Bernard laughed, a comfortable laugh.
He had thought a good deal about Daisy and young Chandler the last two days, and on the whole, he was well pleased. It was a dull, unnatural life the girl was leading with Old Aunt. And Jerry was earning good money. They wouldn’t have to wait long, these two young people, as many a beau and his girl often had to wait, as he, Bernard, and Daisy’s mother had had to do, for ever so long before they could be married. No, there was no reason why they shouldn’t be spliced quite soon—if so the fancy took them. And Bernard had very little doubt that so the fancy would take Jerry, at any rate.
But there was plenty of time. Daisy wouldn’t be eighteen until the week after next. They might wait until she was twenty. By that time, Old Aunt might be dead, and Daisy might come into quite a tidy little bit of money.
“What are you smiling at?” his wife snapped, breaking his reverie.
He shook himself. “I—smiling? At nothing that I know of.” Then he waited a moment. “Well, if you must know, Ellen, I was thinking of Daisy and that young chap Jerry Chandler. He is gone on her, isn’t he?”
“Gone?” Mrs. Bernard laughed, a queer, odd, not unkindly laugh. “Gone, Bernard? Why, he’s out of sight—right, out of sight!”
Then, hesitatingly and looking narrowly at her husband, she continued, twisting a bit of her black apron with her fingers as she spoke: “I suppose he’ll be going over this afternoon to fetch her? Or—do you think he’ll have to be at that inquest, Bernard?”
“Inquest? What inquest?” He looked at her, puzzled.
“Why, the inquest on those bodies found in the passage near King’s Cross.”
“Oh, no; he’d have no call to be at the inquest. For that matter, I know he’s going over to fetch Daisy. He said so last night—just when you went up to the lodger.”
“That’s just as well.” Mrs. Bernard spoke with considerable satisfaction. “Otherwise I suppose you’d have had to go. I wouldn’t like the house left—not with us out of it. Mr. Basset would be upset if there came a ring at the door.”
“Oh, I won’t leave the house, don’t you worry, Ellen—not while you’re out.”
“Not even if I’m out a good while, Bernard.”
“No fear. Of course, you’ll be a long time if it’s your idea to see that doctor at Eating?”
He looked at her questioningly, and Mrs. Bernard nodded. Somehow, nodding didn’t seem as bad as speaking a lie.