CHAPTER VIII—THE HOUSES OF TRAGEDY
The discovery of the box—And what it contained—The mystery of the coat-cellar—A dreary quarter—A house with a past—Another trunk mystery.
THERE are streets and squares and terraces in London which have been renamed in order that they may no longer be associated in the public mind with the dark deeds of which they have been the scene.
Sometimes, where the renaming has been a difficult one, the houses have been renumbered. But many remain as they were, and Londoners pass them daily and hourly, little dreaming of the drama that once made them notorious.
Let us this bright spring morning take a trip round London and look at some of the houses which a few years ago were the scenes of tragedy and mystery.
We are in a quiet square of well-built, neatly-painted residences. There is an air of comfort and well-to-do-ness about them which bespeaks the "genteel" neighbourhood. The windows are gracefully curtained, the knockers and bells are highly polished, the steps are scrupulously clean. The window-boxes are filled with flowers.
Look well at the house with the turquoise-blue window-boxes. A canary is hanging in the dining-room and singing merrily in the morning sunshine. As we watch, the door opens and a nursemaid comes carefully down the steps with a baby in a perambulator. Two prettily-dressed little girls follow. At the open doorway a young mother stands and watches her little ones as they start hill of childish merriment for their morning walk.
It is a pretty scene, and we know that the four walls of the house frame a picture of happy English home-life. But some years ago there lay in the room in which the canary is singing a corded box. At the front door stood a van on which this box was about to be loaded.
There is another little square five minutes' walk away. On the balcony of one of the houses at the far end a charming girl in a pink blouse is standing. She is leaning over the balcony and talking to some girl friends who have come out of a neighbouring house.