“Nor I till now. But I think she must have been educated here, she speaks English so well; though possibly she has not been with him all the time. I should certainly have remembered her if I’d seen her before—such a remarkably beautiful girl. She’s to make her début soon—as a violinist. And what do you suppose was their errand to-day? That young girl actually wanted to see the place where poor Lady Rawson was murdered, and worried her uncle till he brought her across and asked Mrs. Cave to show it them!”
“Morbid curiosity isn’t confined to young people,” Mr. Armitage remarked.
“Quite so, but it’s unhealthy in anyone, and very distressing in a girl like that. As a matter of fact, I went round with them myself. I offered to as Mrs. Cave was alone in the shop—Jessie was out; and I was glad of the opportunity, not from ‘morbid curiosity,’ I assure you, but simply so that I could see the place for myself. It seems so incredible that anyone could be murdered like that in a shop actually full of people, and the murderer get clean away, unless you’ve seen the place. It might have been made on purpose—a regular death-trap—for the booth is really in a narrow passage that at some time has been thrown into the shop, and the door of it opens outwards, towards the shop. Just beyond is the scullery-place, and I think it probable the murderer was lurking there when Jessie Jackson came down to help her aunt. And close at hand, on the right, is the street door, through which he simply walked out.”
“The police think he went out through the garden door,” said Austin.
“Just like ’em. But they’re wrong. Why? Because Sadler’s cab was standing outside the street door, where it was the work of an instant to throw the bag through the window. If the criminal had gone down the garden and out at that door he’d have had to come all the way back to pass the cab. And he’d never have done that; he’d have bolted down the street.”
“I guess you’re right, vicar. And then he tried to steal the cab. Some nerve!”
“Wrong again. That was a bit of boyish mischief.”
“What in thunder makes you say that?”
“Because I happen to know. It will all come out at the next hearing—inquest or police court, or both. However that’s only a detail.”
“What did the girl—the maestro’s niece—say?” asked Winnie.