Detective and mystery stories, English; Private investigators -- Fiction
I found Mrs. Lamb still in a state of indignant perturbation over the
trick served her four days before. Fortunately, she had left everything
in the panelled room exactly as she had found it, with an idea of the
being better able to demand or enforce reparation should her lodgers
return. "The room's theirs, you see, sir," she said, "till the end of
the week, since they paid in advance, and they may come back and offer
to make amends, although I doubt it. As pleasant-spoken a young chap as
you might wish, he seemed, him as come to take the rooms. 'My cousin,'
says he, 'is rather an invalid, havin' only just got over congestion of
the lungs, and he won't be in London till this evening late. He's comin'
up from Birmingham,' he ses, 'and I hope he won't catch a fresh cold on
the way, although of course we've got him muffled up plenty.' He took
the rooms, sir, like a gentleman, and mentioned several gentlemen's
names I knew well, as had lodged here before; and then he put down on
that there very table, sir."--Mrs. Lamb indicated the exact spot with
her hand, as though that made the whole thing much more wonderful--"he
put down on that very table a week's rent in advance, and ses, 'That's
always the best sort of reference, Mrs. Lamb, I think,' as kind-mannered
as anything--and never 'aggled about the amount nor nothing. He only had
a little black bag, but he said his cousin had all the luggage coming
in the train, and as there was so much p'r'aps they wouldn't get it here
till next day. Then he went out and came in with his cousin at eleven
that night--Sarah let 'em in her own self--and in the morning they was
gone--and this!" Poor Mrs. Lamb, plaintively indignant, stretched her
arm towards the wrecked panels.
"If the gentleman as you say is comin' on, sir," she pursued, "can do
anything to find 'em, I'll prosecute 'em, that I will, if it costs me
ten pound. I spoke to the constable on the beat, but he only looked like
a fool, and said if I knew where they were I might charge 'em with
wilful damage, or county court 'em. Of course I know I can do that if I
knew where they were, but how can I find 'em? Mr. Jones he said his name
was; but how many Joneses is there in London, sir?"
I couldn't imagine any answer to a question like this, but I condoled
with Mrs. Lamb as well as I could. She afterwards went on to express
herself much as her sister had done with regard to Kingscote's death,
only as the destruction of her panels loomed larger in her mind, she
dwelt primarily on that. "It might almost seem," she said, "that
somebody had a deadly spite on the pore young gentleman, and went
breakin' up his paintin' one night, and murderin' him the next!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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