Great Porter Square: A Mystery. v. 3

by B. L. Farjeon

Thus it was that Frederick Holdfast, the new tenant, took possession of the house in which his father had been foully murdered.

Silently he re-entered the kitchen, closing behind him the door which led into the area. The place was damp and cold, but his agitation was so intense that he was oblivious of personal discomfort. Even when the rats ran over his stocking feet he was not startled. He had brought a bundle in with him, which he placed upon the table and unpacked. It contained food and wine, but not sufficient for the time he intended to remain in the house. This was to be supplied to him in the basket which the detective promised to lower into the area in a couple of hours. In his breast pocket was a revolver, which he examined carefully. So cautious was he in his proceedings that, before he unpacked his food and examined his revolver, he blocked the stairs which led from the kitchen to the ground floor by chairs, the removing or scattering of which would have warned him that he was not the only person in the house.

Presently he nerved himself to undertake a task which sent thrills of horror through his veins, which brought tears of anguish to his eyes, and sighs of pity and grief to his lips. He opened the door of the servant’s bedroom, a cupboard as small as that which Becky occupied in the next house; he tracked with his eyes the direction which a mortally-wounded man would take from the kitchen door to the door of this miserable bedroom. He followed the track, examining it with agonised care, and knelt down before the stains of blood which marked the spot upon which his murdered father had fallen in his death agony. Time had not worn away the stains, and Frederick’s suffering and sympathy made them clearer to his sight than they could possibly have been to the sight of any other living being. For a long time he remained kneeling by this fatal, palpable, indelible shadow—remained as if in prayer, and overpowering self-communing. And, indeed, during the time he so knelt, with this shadow of his father’s body in his eyes, and weighing as an actual weight upon his heart, causing him to breathe thickly and in short hurried gasps, dim pictures of his childhood passed before him, in every one of which his father appeared in an affectionate and loving guise. And all the while these sweeter presentments were visible to his inner sight, his father dead, with the blood oozing from his fatal wounds, lay before him with horrible distinctness. When he rose, and moved a few paces off, not only the shadow but the very outlines of a physical form seemed to be lying at his feet. The dying face was raised to his, the dim eyes looked into his, the limbs trembled, the overcharged breast heaved; and when, after closing his eyes and opening them again, he compelled himself, because of the actual duty before him, to believe that it was but the trick of a sympathetic imagination, he could not rid himself of the fancy that his father’s spirit was hovering over him, and would never leave him until his task was accomplished.

He tracked the fatal stains out of the kitchen, and up the stairs to the passage to the street door, and noted the stains upon the balustrade, to which his father had clung as he staggered to his death. As he stood in the passage he fancied he heard a stifled movement in one of the rooms above. Hastily he shut out the light of his lamp, and stood in deep darkness, listening for a repetition of the sound. It did not reach him, but as he leant forward, with his head inclined, and his hand upon his revolver, the church clock proclaimed the hour of midnight. Clear, strong and deep, and fraught with unspeakable solemnity, the bell tolled the hour which marks the tragedy and the sorrow of life. Shadows and pictures of sad experiences, and of pathetic and tragic events, which were not in any way connected with him, crowded upon his mind. It appeared as if the records of years were brought before him in every fresh tolling of the bell, and when the echo of the last peal died away, a weight which had grown well nigh intolerable was lifted from his soul. Then, his thoughts recurring to the sound which he had fancied he heard in the room above, he mentally asked himself whether the murderer had paused to listen to the tolling of the midnight hour, and whether any premonition of the fate in store for him had dawned upon his guilty mind?

For awhile nothing further disturbed him. Lying upon the stairs for fully five minutes, he convinced himself that as yet no other human being but himself was in the house. Turning the light of his lantern on again, he continued his examination of his father’s last movements up the stairs to the first floor. No need for him to doubt which was the room his father had occupied. The stains of blood led him to the very door, and here again he shut out the light of his lamp, and listened and looked before he ventured to place his hand upon the handle. Silence reigned; no glimmer of light was observable through the chinks and crevices of the door. Still in darkness, he turned the handle and entered the room. He had disturbed no one; he was alone.

Cautiously he let in the light, but not to its full capacity. An amazing sight greeted him.

None of the furniture in the house had been removed, and everything his father had used during his fatal tenancy was in the room. The piano, the table at which he sat and wrote, the chairs, the bed, were there—but not in the condition in which they had been left. A demon of destruction appeared to have been at work. The bed was ripped open, the paper had been stripped from the walls, the coverings of the chairs were torn off, and the chairs themselves broken to pieces, the table was turned on end, the interior of the piano had been ransacked, the very keys were wrenched away—in the desperate attempt to discover some hidden thing, some hidden document upon which life and death might hang. More than this. The carpet had been taken up, and a few of the boards of the floor had been wrenched away, and the dust beneath searched amongst. But this was recent work; the greater part of the room was still boarded over.

Frederick Holdfast had no intention himself of immediately commencing a search; he knew that it would be dangerous. For a certainty Richard Manx intended to continue it without delay, and was only waiting for a favourable opportunity to leave his attic. This thought induced Frederick to consider in what way he could best watch the villain’s movements, without being himself detected. To do this in the room itself was impossible. There was no chance by the window; it could be done only from the ceiling or from the adjoining room. To effect an opening in the ceiling in so short a time as he had at his disposal was impracticable, and even could it be done, there were dangerous chances of detection. After a little reflection, he decided that it could be best done from the adjoining room, and the moment this was decided upon he saw that Richard Manx had to some extent assisted him. The laths which separated the rooms were fragile, the plaster was thinly spread; many of the laths in the dividing wall had been laid bare by the stripping of the paper. He stood up on the bed, and without an appreciable effort, thrust his finger between the laths, and through the wall paper of the adjoining apartment, choosing that part of the wall which would afford him a favourable point of espionage. Alighting from the bed, he carefully obliterated the marks of footsteps on the clothes, and then left the room for the one adjoining. The door was unlocked, and the key was in the inside. More from the locality than from the aperture, so securely small had he made it, he saw at once that it was practicable, and he ascertained by moving the table close to the wall, that a safe footing was afforded for his watch. This contented him, and for a time he rested.

There were still no signs of Richard Manx. One o’clock had struck, and remembering that at that hour the basket of food was to be lowered into the area, he hastened downstairs, and arrived just in time to receive it.

“Everything is quiet here,” said the detective, in a hoarse whisper. “Is our friend at work?” meaning by “our friend,” Richard Manx.