At half-past seven o’clock in the morning, Mrs. Dyer knocked at the door of the miser’s house, and was somewhat surprised when, five minutes having elapsed, her summons remained unanswered.
“Perhaps he has over-slept himself,” she muttered to herself: “I will come back again presently;”—and the woman returned to her own abode.
But something like a misgiving had stolen into her mind,—a vague and indefinable fear—a presentiment against which she could not wrestle. A gloom had fallen on her spirits: she was in that humour when people who are in any way superstitious, expect bad news. Not that she had heard any noise in the course of the night, or that she had any motive for suspicion:—the feeling that oppressed her was excited by no accountable and intelligible cause,—unless, indeed, it were that during the five or six years she had waited upon Mr. Percival, this was the very first occasion on which she had failed to find him already up and dressed, and ready to admit her at a stipulated hour.
Having performed a few domestic duties in her own house—but in a strange manner, as if she scarcely knew what she was doing,—Mrs. Dyer returned to the miser’s front-door, at which she knocked again.
But again there was no response: all was silent.
The widow-woman was now seriously alarmed; and, hastening back into her dwelling, she informed her female lodgers that she could not make Mr. Percival hear next door, and was afraid something had happened. The three women, to whom these observations were addressed, accompanied her to the miser’s house; and as all within was still silent as the grave, they proceeded round to the back-door with the intention of looking in through the window shutters, which, as we have before stated, were perforated with many heart-holes. But Mrs. Dyer first happened to try the back-gate, and, to her surprise, found it unfastened. She and the other women then entered the house; and their attention, now rendered keen by dark suspicions, was immediately attracted to the fact that the part of the door-post into which the bolt of the back-gate fitted, had been cut away, from the outside, in such a manner that it was an easy affair to slide back the bolt. The females beheld this ominous appearance with dismay;—but how shuddering were the looks of deep apprehension which they rapidly and silently exchanged, when they likewise noticed an old piece of iron still sticking in the lock,—a sure indication of that lock having been picked, also from the outside!
Had either one of the women now manifested the least hesitation to proceed, the others would have gladly followed the example to retreat. But, huddling all together—and in deep silence—they slowly ascended the stairs leading to the back parlour.
The door of this room was half open; and as the widow endeavoured to push it farther back still, it was stopped by something that evidently was not a table nor a chair,—no—nor aught made of wood.
The women slowly entered the parlour:—and then their tongues were suddenly loosened—and piercing shrieks burst from their lips. For the prismatic light which streamed through the heart-holes of the closed shutters, played on the smashed, gory, and disfigured countenance of the murdered man!
Terror for a few minutes rooted to the spot the spectatresses of this horrible spectacle:—and, clinging—hanging to each other, they remained gazing, in terror and dismay, on the remains of him whom they had all seen alive and in health on the preceding day!