“The young lady herself.”
Many more questions Patterson put to the old lady, but elicited no noteworthy fact, except that two large, heavy trunks had been sent away by Parcels Delivery a couple of days before. Therefore, thanking Mrs Luff, who, of course, was extremely curious to know why the police were taking such an active interest in her neighbour, we left and made inquiries of the people in the adjoining house on the opposite hand.
It was a lodging-house and the owner, a rather surly old widow, was not at all communicative. What she told us amounted practically to what we had already learnt. She, too, had long ago set the old man and his daughter down as mysterious persons, and her two servants had never been able to find out anything regarding them.
So after nearly half an hour’s absence we returned to the house of mystery, watched, of course, by the persons in the houses on either side. None suspected a tragedy, but all remained at their windows expecting to see somebody arrested.
In the dining-room we found Doctor Knowles, the police divisional surgeon, who had been sent for by the police. He had already examined the bodies and was on the point of returning home.
“Well, doctor, what’s your opinion?” asked Patterson.
“I can form none until after the post-mortem,” answered the prim, youngish, dark-moustached man in silk hat and frock coat, a typical Kensington practitioner, who was known to be a great favourite with his lady patients.
“Are there no marks of violence?”
“None,” he responded. “Although there seems no doubt that there has been foul play, yet the means used to encompass their death remains an entire mystery. That laboratory, too, is a very remarkable feature.”
“Why?” I asked.