Secret Service; or, Recollections of a City Detective

by Andrew Forrester

I don’t think this man was quite up to his work. Of course I had not formed that opinion when I set him about the job; but a review of what transpired now inclines me to think he made a too palpable show of his suspicions. He made no secret of his quality, or the work he had in hand; but for this he may have had adequate reasons.

Mr. and Mrs. Robinson were both convinced that the murder (if murder it was) had not been committed by any one in their household. They were both prepared to spend any amount of money in defence of their suspected servant, if she had been arrested on suspicion. They had come to the conclusion that the sad affair was the result of an accident,—which was not an over-strained hypothesis.

If, however, it was a case of murder, for which there seemed no apparent motive, it must have been committed by somebody obtaining access from the outside to the room in which the child was sleeping; and a cursory examination of the place showed my man it was by no means a difficult thing to obtain both access and egress through a window opening upon a side of the cottage. My man would have arrived at the conclusion very soon that the death of the poor child had been caused by accident, and would have returned to London, but for the not over recondite suspicions generated under his own eye in the cottage itself.

Very curious to know his opinion, very eager in the suggestion of contrary and improbable theories, and very profuse in expressions of regard for Mrs. Robinson and “dear little Willie,” was the nursemaid. She followed my man about with a closeness which seemed to indicate a kind of fascination or terror. At least this is what he told me he thought of her conduct. This alone marked out that girl as the murderess to his mind, and he resolved to linger as long as he could, with a decent show of appearances, in the cottage, thoroughly confident that something would turn up to fix the crime on her, and perhaps somebody else in connexion with her.

The room assigned to him was a rather capacious and tolerably comfortable one, adjoining that through which the little child passed to heaven, and some distance from the chamber in which its nurse had slept since the “accident.” Of course my man was not superstitious, and had no unnatural fears—to which circumstance, perhaps, may be ascribed the fact that he left his dressing-case open and his razors loose during his stay at the cottage.

My man was moreover not afraid of ghosts, which perhaps was fortunate. The window-catch was broken, and the lock of the door was so dilapidated that it would have kept no impudent dog or cat from entering, and it afforded the room no protection against intruding spirits.

One night, about a week after his arrival at the cottage, he had fallen into a sleep,—such a sleep as a man of his profession might be allowed, a sort of permanent half-wakefulness, in which the footfall of an elf would have aroused consciousness without stirring a muscle or raising an eyelid, and from which a salute of artillery could not have disturbed him abruptly enough to produce a quiver or a twitch of skin or muscle,—when that insecure door did open, and the form of a woman, in her night-dress, appeared at his bedside.

Her step excited the wakefulness of my man as he lay with his face to the door. He gently opened his eyes wide enough to enable him to examine and measure the form of the nocturnal visitor, without permitting her to notice the effect of her presence. He saw her glance round the room, which the beams of the moon lighted up sufficiently to exhibit the several articles on the toilet-table and elsewhere. My man thought his interrupter’s eyes fell upon the loose razors, and he availed himself of the opportunity afforded by the turning of her face aslant from his bed to disengage his arms somewhat from the bedclothes. He was now prepared to meet an attack upon him by her with his own material weapons.

He had misunderstood the woman’s object in visiting his bedchamber that night.

She turned again in the direction of the bed. He now thought it prudent to let her see that she was noticed. He coolly raised himself up on his haunches, and fixed his eyes upon her.