“Mr. Onslow, sir, to be sure,” she replied, “and a very good one of him it is too. I hope he’s not a friend of yours, because I couldn’t abear him. The way he treated his poor foreign wife of his was enough to make an honest woman’s blood boil.”
“So he had a foreign wife, had he?” said Burrell. “That’s interesting. Tell me all you can about him.”
“There’s not much to be told, sir, except about his bullying and nagging that poor young thing. She was a foreigner, as I have just said, but as nice a young lady as ever stepped in at my door. When they first came she told me that Mr. Onslow was an artist, and that they wanted to be quiet and away from London. They didn’t mind putting up with the roughness of things, she said, so long as they could be quiet. Well, sir, they had this room and the bedroom above, and for the first few days everything went as smooth and as nice as could be. Then I noticed that she took to crying, and that he went away day after day and once for two days. At last he disappeared altogether, leaving her without a halfpenny in the world. Oh! I’d have liked to have seen the brute and have given him a bit of my mind. It would have done him good, I’ll promise him that. I shall never forget that poor young thing in her trouble. She waited and waited for him to come back, but at last when there was no sign of him, she came to me in my kitchen there to know what she should do. 'I know you have not had your money, Mrs. Raikes,’ she said in a kind of piteous foreign way, that went to my heart. 'I can not stay here any longer, and so, if you’ll trust me, I’ll go away to London and try to find my husband. Even if I do not, you shall not lose by us.’ I told her I didn’t want the money, and that I was as sorry for her as a woman could be. Poor dear, I could see that her heart was nearly broken.”
“And what happened then?”
“Nothing, sir, except that she went away, and she hadn’t been gone a week before the money that was owing to me was sent in a Post Office Order. From that day to this I’ve heard nothing of either of them and that’s the truth. Whether she found her husband I can not say, but if she’d take my advice she’d never try to.”
“You are quite sure that you’d know the man again?”
“I am certain I should,” the woman replied. “I hope, sir, in telling you all this, I’ve been doing no harm?”
“You have been doing a great deal of good,” Burrell replied. “Shortly after she left you, poor Mrs. Onslow, as you call her, was most brutally murdered, and I have been commissioned by the friends of the man who is wrongfully accused of the crime to endeavour to discover the real criminal.”
“Murdered, sir? you surely don’t mean that?”
“I do! A more abominable crime has not been committed this century.”