‘Yes, sir, returned the chief with alacrity. ‘If you like I’ll go down with you at once.’
A few minutes later Sutherland and the inquiry officer were rattling down towards Putney in a hansom cab. It was a dark and dismal afternoon in autumn, and as they rapidly passed the gates of Hyde Park the leafless trees looked desolate through a thin mist of rain. To the eye of Edgar Sutherland everything was sombre and dreadful, dark with tragic shadows of sin and death.
They drove through Knightsbridge to Hammersmith, then crossing Hammersmith Bridge, beneath which the river rolled black and sinister, came into the gloomy purlieus of a desolate waterside suburb. It was now growing dark, and the street lamps, which were few and far between, flashed dismally on cheerless brand-new villas, for the most part untenanted and faced with boards ‘To Let,’ gloomy gardens, dark brickfields, and spaces of damp meadow stretching down to the river side. Here and there a tavern opened its bloodshot eyes, and attracted one or two dreary moths to its dingy gleam.
After passing through a mile or more of this gloomy neighbourhood, the cab turned down a narrow street running at right angles to the river banks, and pulled up before a desolate stone building with the inscription—‘Police Station.’
The officer alighted and led the way into a whitewashed room, lit by a solitary gas jet, and occupied by a policeman in uniform, who stood at a desk writing. Wafered on the wall, close to the desk, was a placard similar to that which Sutherland had already seen, headed in bold capitals—
FOUND DROWNED!
and giving the description of the body of a female found that morning by a waterman in the near neighbourhood of Putney Bridge.
After a few hurried words with the inquiry officer, the police sergeant turned to Sutherland.
‘You wish to identify, sir? I’m afraid you’ll find it a difficult job. As far as I can make out, it’s been a long time in the water.’
Sutherland shuddered as the sergeant, in the most business-like way possible, took down a key from a nail and led the way to the back of the building, across a damp yard, and up to a low wooden door: this he opened leisurely with his key, and revealed a sort of rude mortuary, lit by a gas jet turned so low down as to leave the place almost in darkness. They entered, and when the sergeant had leisurely turned up the gas, saw, stretched out upon a wooden slab, what had once been a living woman.