Devlin the BarberFarjeon, B. L. (Benjamin Leopold)
General
Devlin the Barber
Farjeon, B. L. (Benjamin Leopold)
Detective and mystery stories; English fiction -- 19th century
"'Did it look as if it had been slep in?'
"'Yes.'
"'So that you see, my dear landlady,' he said, grinning at me, 'that
it wasn't possible for me to have murdered the girl.'
"'Who said you did it?' I asked, starting back, for he had come close
to me, and I thought he was going to touch me ag'in.
"'You didn't say so,' he said, 'but you thought so. It was wrote in
your face, as I told you a minute ago. It is women like you who would
put a man's life in danger, and think no more of it than snuffing a
candle.'
"He didn't remain with me much longer, but went up to his room. He was
right in what he said he saw wrote in my face while he was smoothing
my hair; an idea had entered my head that it was him who had killed
the poor girl. I think him bad enough for anything; there's nothing
wicked I wouldn't believe of him. But of course it wasn't possible for
him to have done it; and I thought with thankfulness it wasn't
possible for Lemon to have done it, for he never stirred out of the
house that night. It was what Lemon said in his sleep that made me
tremble and shiver. Why, sir, he spoke of the murder _before it was
done!_ It says in the papers that when the poor girl was found she had
been dead hours, and the doctor fixes it that she must have been
murdered between two and three o'clock in the morning. And two hours
and a half before she was murdered Lemon was raving in his sleep and
telling all about it! How did he know, sir? how did he know?
"If it had been a ordinary case--if Lemon had only spoke in his sleep
about some murder or other, and I'd read the next day that a murder
_had_ been committed that night, it would have been strange, but
nothing so very much out of the way. Our minds sometimes runs on
dreadful things, enough to give one the creeps, and we ain't
accountable for everything we say when we're asleep. But Lemon said
Victoria Park, and it was done in Victoria Park. He said eighteen
years, and that was jest her age. He said golden hair, and she _had_
golden hair. He said a bunch of white daisies, and she wore a bunch of
white daisies. He said blood on 'em, and there _was_ blood on 'em. He
said stabbed to the heart, and she _was_ stabbed to the heart!
"I'll tell you, sir, what come to me, and made me feel almost like a
murderess. It was that if I'd really known what was going to happen
when I heard Lemon talking in his sleep, I might have saved the life
of that poor girl. But how was it possible for me to know? Still, that
didn't prevent me feeling like a guilty woman.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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