The Attic Murder by S. Fowler Wright (read me like a book txt) 📕
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Equally certain was it that she would guess who her new lodger was most likely to be. She would remember how he had let himself into the hall. She would calculate the time of his arrival, comparing it with that at which Harold Vaughan had escaped. She would read his description, and recognize some convincing detail.
Probably she might make excuse to come up, and refresh her memory, after which she would go or send to the police.
Should he give her time to do that? No, at the first sign of suspicion, he must make a quick bolt from the house. His over-excited imagination saw her obstructing him, attempting to hold him till the police should arrive. He struck at her clutching hands. He pushed her roughly away. She fell, and her head struck that sharp edge at the base of the table-leg, showing under the untidy table-cloth that drooped too far on this side. She lay still. He broke from the house, perhaps a hunted murderer now. She had to repeat her question of whether he would like macaroni for his evening meal, with a nice bit of plum-tart she had over from the midday dinner, before he heard it…
He decided that she might not be a bad woman with whom to deal — almost certainly of a harmless type in normal circumstances but that if she guessed who he was she might betray him for half-a-crown.
Yet, was betrayal a fair word? He had come to her with a false name and a lying tale, and had bluffed her with a gesture of offering money he did not possess. And the crime of which he had been convicted was not of a pleasant kind… No, he could not blame her should she decide that inclination and duty pointed in the same direction.
Then should he leave at once, before suspicion could be aroused? He debated this, after she had withdrawn from the room, and it appeared in no better light.
He would be penniless, shelterless with the knowledge that every policeman he passed would be looking, with a sharp eye, for just such a one as himself; and that to apply for a lodging anywhere within walking distance would be to invite suspicion of who he was. And with no money — no luggage — what possible resort could he have that would avoid starvation, and would not lead to instant arrest?
Pondering thus, he resolved that the risks of the open street could not be less than those of the precarious shelter that he had found, and from this decision he saw further that he might have a better chance if he should himself reveal his identity, rather than to leave it to the almost certain discovery of the next hours.
By doing so, he could at least assert his innocence; could tell his tale, perhaps, so that it would rouse the sympathy of his auditor, and avoid the prejudice that his deception would naturally excite, should she learn of it by other means.
Deciding this, he had to consider what proposal he could make for discharging the cost of his lodging.
If he could win the woman’s sympathy, he might remain there in almost absolute security, so long as he should not venture outside the door. And after a time he might walk boldly out, at least in the darker hours, trusting that the keenness of the first search would have relaxed, and that wherever it might be pursued, it would not be most active around the place of his conviction, with the immediate vicinity of which he had had no other connection, and to which it might seem particularly improbable that he would return.
But to remain in hiding thus would give him little opportunity of engaging in any occupation of a remunerative character. He could not hope for a sympathetic hearing if he should add to the fact that he was a convict dodging arrest a proposal that he should be fed and boarded free for an indefinite period, or until he should be recaptured by the police, and disappear for that which his sentence required.
This consideration naturally turned his thoughts to the I money that was his, in his true name, and which he could obtain tomorrow by the simple process of cashing a cheque, if he should be prepared to face the risk of a walk through the streets, or of boarding a ‘bus in the daylight hours, and of entering the bank, where he would be known, with the vague improbable risk that the police would have ascertained that Harold Vaughan and Francis Hammerton were the same, and be on the watch for him to enter so well-baited a trap.
He was not sure how he would attempt to reach it, but it was the thought of that available money that gave him courage for the present purpose he had in mind. He would tell the woman just how he was placed: would admit that he had lied about his luggage and other things. But he would add that he could get funds from his bank in the morning, and that he would then pay her in advance as he had first proposed; and she might well prefer, even if her sympathies remained unstirred, to take the money of so quietly-disposed a lodger, rather than have the barren satisfaction of turning him out.
Anyway, it could be tried, on the proverbial argument that a poor chance is better than none at all… If he should be dissatisfied with her response, he would walk out at once to the street where already the twilight fell… He need not delay to pack!
With these thoughts, being of a nature to challenge fate rather than dodge its blows, he went out to the hall and descended the basement stairs, down which he had heard Mrs. Benson’s steps recede after she had cleared his table.
He was guided by the sound of a woman’s voice along an ill-lighted passage to the door of her private retreat, and was about to knock when he was deterred by the words which he could clearly hear.
FRANCIS HAMMERTON, if we are to think of him by his true name, had not considered the probability that Mrs. Benson might not be the sole occupant of the house, his mind having been concentrated upon aspects of his position which threatened more definite hazards.
Actually, the woman whose voice he heard was a next-door neighbour, Miss Janet Brown, who had looked in with no further purpose than to return a borrowed flat-iron. But it happened that she was already informed of the exciting incident of the afternoon, and when Mrs. Benson detained her for a cup of the tea which could be cheaply obtained by adding fresh water to the leaves in the lodger’s teapot, and naturally mentioned the good fortune which had walked in less than two hours before Janet was quick to see the connection between the events.
“Edwards?” she asked scornfully. “You call him Mr. Vaughan next time you go up, and see how he’ll jump, or else answer his name without noticing how he’s giving himself away which would be just as good proof.”
“I don’t think I shall try that,” Mrs. Benson answered doubtfully. She was sensibly trembling between the disappointment at the prospective loss of a most promising lodger, and vaguer fear of what so cunning and unscrupulous a character might be doing among the dowdy dining-room furniture. “I suppose,” she concluded, “I’d better let the police know.”
Miss Brown, a fair-haired angular woman, who showed her half Scottish ancestry only in her bony figure, and the practical shrewdness with which she faced a difficult world, considered this proposition, and pronounced against it.
“There’ll be a reward offered, if you wait, more like than not. It might be a hundred pounds! You’ll be a fool if you let them know before that. Keep him close, I say, till you see how the cat jumps.”
Mrs. Benson wavered miserably between the prospect of such wealth, and the shadow of a great fear. She was a woman who prided herself upon her respectability, which meant, among other things, that she came of a family who had no dealings with the police.
Even for a criminal to be arrested beneath her roof would tend to taint her with the stigma of an undesired and undesirable notoriety. It was not at all the kind of thing which her deceased parents would have approved. It might not be quite so disgraceful as being behind with the rent (which had actually happened three years ago, though, by the combined mercies of Heaven and Mr. Clay, it was known to none but herself and the landlord’s agent), but it was not the kind of thing that should occur in the house of a woman whose uncle was a builder’s merchant, and whose brother-in-law had once sat on a Rural District Council.
But, far worse than that, suppose that, by not giving information at once, she should “get in trouble” with the
“I don’t know,” she said, “what I ought to do. Not rightly. He might clear off before then.”
The last sentence was spoken in a tone between hope and fear. Had she heard the front door bang at that moment, her first sensation might have been relief, rather than regret for a lodger lost, or the romantic shadow of reward faded away.
But Miss Brown put the suggestion aside. “Not he,” she said. “If you don’t let him see you suspect. He’ll be lying too snug for that… You’ll find he won’t stir out of the door, more likely than not… You can just wait till the reward comes out, and walk round the corner to pick it up.”
“Suppose they say I ought to have told them before?”
“Told them what? Your lodger’s a different name, isn’t he? How can you tell that as you don’t know? Even then, you won’t do more than a guess.
“You don’t read the papers much. You’re too busy for that, with all our lodgers to feed, and to wash and mend, and the house cleaning from attic down… But you see the bills. 100 Pounds REWARD! Anyone’d stop to read them. — And you go straight round on the chance.”
Francis Hammerton, having heard the most part of this conversation, or at least Janet’s part in it, for Mrs. Benson had a voice of less penetrating quality, did not wait to hear more.
He had heard sufficient to conclude that he would not be immediately denounced, and to see that he would increase his peril by confessing an identity already guessed. Janet’s last statement led him to conclude that there were most probably other lodgers in the house, and he saw that this must increase the risk of discovery while he remained listening at Mrs. Benson’s door.
Even in a less compromising position, he would have had no inclination to make himself known to the other occupants of the house, or to give occasion for his presence to be narrated to them. He went back while he safely could.
WITH some trepidation, only partially controlled, Mrs. Benson brought up the supper.
It was a condition of which her lodger might have been less observant had he not already heard the
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