It wouldn’t interest you to hear the rest, but I have all the newspapers put aside if you would like to read the reports some day. The murder of Mrs. Grigg was one of London’s many mysteries. There was no clew. The servant was able to clear herself conclusively of all suspicion. Scotland Yard was baffled. Ambitious journalists, with a taste for intrigue and interviewing, started wild theories, and there ended. Great Ormond Street was blocked with the crowd that gaped stolidly all day at the shabby house with the drawn blinds opposite the hospital.
Orion didn’t go to the City. He was junior partner—so he said—in a shipping-house near London Bridge. He stayed at home in the jaunty room with the pink-tinted gas globes and drank all day. Orion was in a bad way. You might guess that when he drank whisky at three and something a bottle as if it had been water.
We’ll skip the inquest and so on, and pass to the funeral.
Orion begged me to go, and I went. One couldn’t refuse a poor, invertebrate, pleading fool like that. His aunt’s death had absolutely doubled him up.
There was the uncomfortable atmosphere of death about the place when we got there. I’ll show you the particular house next time we are in Great Ormond Street. There is a narrow passage paneled to the ceiling with wood that is painted stone color. There is a sitting room to your left as you go in, and a flight of stairs ready to your feet at the end of the passage.
We went into the sitting room. There was a smeary decanter half full of thick port on the table. There were wine glasses and an uncut cake. Orion sat down. By and by we heard deprecating, creaking shoes coming downstairs, heard unctuous words of sympathy in the passage. Then we heard a woman’s shrill voice—a sharp, short voice, like the keen snap of ice. Orion started.
“That’s Clara Citron,” he said in a frightened way.
She came in, a little middle-aged, shrewish-looking woman. She gave Orion her hand—it was thin and red and knuckly.
“I saw it in the papers,” she said, without any circumlocution. “I came up from Southsea at once.”
“I didn’t know your address,” he stammered feebly.