The Beetle, Richard Marsh [general ebook reader .txt] 📗

“I dunno! I ’aven’t seen ’im! Mrs. ’Enderson, she says to me! ‘ ’Gustus Barley,’ she says, ‘a bloke’s been murdered. That there Harab what I chucked out ’alf a hour ago been and murdered ’im, and left ’im behind up in my back room. You run as ’ard as you can tear and tell them there dratted pleese what’s so fond of shovin’ their dirty noses into respectable people’s ’ouses.’ So I comes and tells yer. That’s all I knows about it.”

We went four in the hansom which had been waiting in the street to Mrs. Henderson’s in Paradise Place⁠—the Inspector and we three. “Mr. Pleesman” and “ ’Gustus Barley” followed on foot. The Inspector was explanatory.

“Mrs. Henderson keeps a sort of lodging-house⁠—a ‘Sailors’ Home’ she calls it, but no one could call it sweet. It doesn’t bear the best of characters, and if you asked me what I thought of it, I should say in plain English that it was a disorderly house.”

Paradise Place proved to be within three or four hundred yards of the Station House. So far as could be seen in the dark it consisted of a row of houses of considerable dimensions⁠—and also of considerable antiquity. They opened on to two or three stone steps which led directly into the street. At one of the doors stood an old lady with a shawl drawn over her head. This was Mrs. Henderson. She greeted us with garrulous volubility.

“So you ’ave come, ’ave you? I thought you never was a-comin’ that I did.” She recognised the Inspector. “It’s you, Mr. Phillips, is it?” Perceiving us, she drew a little back “Who’s them ’ere parties? They ain’t coppers?”

Mr. Phillips dismissed her inquiry, curtly.

“Never you mind who they are. What’s this about someone being murdered.”

“Ssh!” The old lady glanced round. “Don’t you speak so loud, Mr. Phillips. No one don’t know nothing about it as yet. The parties what’s in my ’ouse is most respectable⁠—most! and they couldn’t abide the notion of there being police about the place.”

“We quite believe that, Mrs. Henderson.”

The Inspector’s tone was grim.

Mrs. Henderson led the way up a staircase which would have been distinctly the better for repairs. It was necessary to pick one’s way as one went, and as the light was defective stumbles were not infrequent.

Our guide paused outside a door on the topmost landing. From some mysterious recess in her apparel she produced a key.

“It’s in ’ere. I locked the door so that nothing mightn’t be disturbed. I knows ’ow particular you pleesmen is.”

She turned the key. We all went in⁠—we, this time, in front, and she behind.

A candle was guttering on a broken and dilapidated single washhand stand. A small iron bedstead stood by its side, the clothes on which were all tumbled and tossed. There was a rush-seated chair with a hole in the seat⁠—and that, with the exception of one or two chipped pieces of stoneware, and a small round mirror which was hung on a nail against the wall, seemed to be all that the room contained. I could see nothing in the shape of a murdered man. Nor, it appeared, could the Inspector either.

“What’s the meaning of this, Mrs. Henderson? I don’t see anything here.”

“It’s be’ind the bed, Mr. Phillips. I left ’im just where I found ’im, I wouldn’t ’ave touched ’im not for nothing, nor yet ’ave let nobody else ’ave touched ’im neither, because, as I say, I know ’ow particular you pleesmen is.”

We all four went hastily forward. Atherton and I went to the head of the bed, Lessingham and the Inspector, leaning right across the bed, peeped over the side. There, on the floor in the space which was between the bed and the wall, lay the murdered man.

At sight of him an exclamation burst from Sydney’s lips.

“It’s Holt!”

“Thank God!” cried Lessingham. “It isn’t Marjorie!”

The relief in his tone was unmistakable. That the one was gone was plainly nothing to him in comparison with the fact that the other was left.

Thrusting the bed more into the centre of the room I knelt down beside the man on the floor. A more deplorable spectacle than he presented I have seldom witnessed. He was decently clad in a grey tweed suit, white hat, collar and necktie, and it was perhaps that fact which made his extreme attenuation the more conspicuous. I doubt if there was an ounce of flesh on the whole of his body. His cheeks and the sockets of his eyes were hollow. The skin was drawn tightly over his cheek bones⁠—the bones themselves were staring through. Even his nose was wasted, so that nothing but a ridge of cartilage remained. I put my arm beneath his shoulder and raised him from the floor; no resistance was offered by the body’s gravity⁠—he was as light as a little child.

“I doubt,” I said, “if this man has been murdered. It looks to me like a case of starvation, or exhaustion⁠—possibly a combination of both.”

“What’s that on his neck?” asked the Inspector⁠—he was kneeling at my side.

He referred to two abrasions of the skin⁠—one on either side of the man’s neck.

“They look to me like scratches. They seem pretty deep, but I don’t think they’re sufficient in themselves to cause death.”

“They might be, joined to an already weakened constitution. Is there anything in his pockets?⁠—let’s lift him on to the bed.”

We lifted him on to the bed⁠—a featherweight he was to lift. While the Inspector was examining his pockets⁠—to find them empty⁠—a tall man with a big black beard came bustling in. He proved to be Dr. Glossop, the local police surgeon, who had been sent for before our quitting the Station House.

His first pronouncement, made as soon as he commenced his examination, was, under the circumstances, sufficiently startling.

“I don’t believe the man’s dead. Why didn’t you send for me directly you found him?”

The question was put to Mrs. Henderson.

“Well, Dr. Glossop, I wouldn’t touch ’im myself, and I wouldn’t ’ave ’im touched by no one else, because, as I’ve said afore, I know ’ow particular them pleesmen