His darling sin

by M. E. Braddon

"There's something bitter bad behind that," mused Faunce, as he tramped across the bridge to Waterloo Station for the last Putney train, "but, for all that, I can't believe she's a murderess."

Faunce spent the next morning in his den in Essex Street poring over a book to which he had frequent recourse, and of which he was justly proud, since it was the wife of his bosom who had compiled this register of passing events for his study and use, a labour of love on her part, achieved with abnormal slowness, and kept closely up to date. The book was carried home to Putney on the first of every month, and Mrs. Faunce's careful hands added such paragraphs bearing on the scheme of the work, as she had cut out of the newspapers during the previous four weeks.

It had pleased this good helpmeet to think that she was assisting her husband in his professional labours, and the gruesome nature of her researches had never troubled her.

Mrs. Faunce's book was a large folio bound in red levant leather, and containing newspaper cuttings, pasted in by the lady's careful hands, and indexed and classified with neatness and intelligence.

The volume was labelled "Not accounted for," and was a record of exceeding ghastliness.

It contained the reports of coroners' inquests upon all manner of mysterious deaths, the unexplained cases which might have been murder, the "found drowned," the nameless corpses discovered in empty houses, in lodging-house garrets, on desolate heaths and waste places; a dismal calendar of tragic destinies, the record of hard fate or of undiscovered crime.

Steadily, carefully, John Faunce searched the spacious pages where the scraps of newspaper type stood out against a broad margin of white paper. He began his scrutiny at the date on which Colonel Rannock was said to have left London, and pursued it without finding any fact worth his attention till he came to a paragraph dated May 30, and extracted from the Hants Mercury, a popular bi-weekly newspaper, published in Southampton.

"Strange Discovery at Redbridge.—An inquest was held yesterday afternoon at the Royal George, Redbridge, on the body of a man, which had been found the previous day by some workmen engaged on the repair of the road by the river. Their attention was attracted by the proceedings of some gulls that were hovering and screaming over a discarded boat that lay keel upwards in the slime and weeds of the foreshore, at a spot where the tide must have washed over it day by day. The timbers were so rotten that they crumbled under the men's hands as they tried to lift the boat; but worthless as it was, they found it carefully secured with two strong stakes which had been thrust between the timbers at stern and bow, and driven deep into the beach below the soft ooze and shifting mud that moved with every tide.

"The men pulled up the stakes and turned the keel over, and, almost buried in the mud, they found the body of a man which had evidently been lying there for a long time, and of which even the clothing was so decomposed as to be unrecognizable. The most careful scrutiny failed to afford any indication of identity, except the name of a well-known West End tailor on the trousers-buttons, and the fact that the unknown had been tall and strongly built. The doctor's evidence showed that the back of the skull had been fractured by some blunt instrument, and by a single blow of extraordinary violence. Death must have been almost instantaneous. The inquiry was adjourned in the hope of further evidence transpiring."

Other notices followed at short intervals, but no further evidence had "transpired." A verdict of murder by some person or persons unknown had ended the inquiry.