“I had been to a dance, and it must have been nearly three o’clock before I got back. Now that I recollect, I am horrified to think that I actually slept in the flat within a few feet of the dead body of the man I had known so well.”
“Yes,” remarked Ransley in his curious cold tone of disbelief. “Quite naturally.”
Then a few minutes later the woman who had denied all knowledge of the affair was sent back to her cell, and the superintendent gave orders for her to be brought before the magistrate next morning and charged with the murder of Enrico Rossi.
This was done, and the evening newspapers were full of the sensational affair, though, owing to certain circumstances, it was not deemed wise by the authorities to let the public know the exact problem. Hence the case was camouflaged. There were certain interests at stake which apparently puzzled even the Home Office.
Eva Priestley, represented by a well-known Bow Street solicitor, who offered no defence, was remanded. Her husband was communicated with, but he knew nothing, and was, no doubt, astounded at the discovery, and mystified regarding the young man Rossi.
A week later the prisoner, a tall, fair-haired woman, whose photograph, in due course, appeared in all the picture-papers, and whom readers of this present narrative must well remember under another name, was committed for trial at the Old Bailey upon the capital charge, the Public Prosecutor alleging that she had enticed the young fellow to her flat, and had murdered him for the contents of his wallet.
Geoffrey Falconer agreed with Superintendent Ransley and with the eminent King’s Counsel who prosecuted. The admission of Mrs. Priestley that she and Enrico were old friends was surely most damning evidence.
Not until several days after Mrs. Priestley had been sent for trial was a curious fact noticed concerning the blue serge jacket which poor Enrico wore at the time he lost his life. Inside the collar the tab, bearing the name of the tailor in Rome who had made the suit, had been hastily cut aside, and beneath it a slit had been made, apparently with a sharp knife. But whether this had been done during Rossi’s lifetime or after death could not be established.
One of the strangest features of the affair, however, was that weird message by radio-telephone—a message spoken, no doubt, by one aware of the fact that Enrico had been done to death. The police inquiries, however, failed to elicit any proof that the woman suspected of the crime had any connection with anybody acquainted with wireless, even in its most amateur form.
Obsessed by the mystery, Geoffrey had many conversations concerning it with Sylvia, who believed in Mrs. Priestley’s innocence notwithstanding the chain of circumstantial evidence and the fact that the body had been hidden in her flat. But if Mrs. Priestley had not murdered the young man, who had? asked the Public Prosecutor.