City and town life -- Fiction; Death -- Fiction; England -- Fiction; Short stories, English
“It give me such a orful turn!” she burst out at last, addressing
herself to me, as Orion remained half in the cupboard, carefully
putting a wire cover over the joint. “I’ve never been mixed up in
no sich thing before. I’ve never been to prison. Not me! Nor any
of my relations. It’s made my ’eart that bad--I suffers with the
palpitations.”
Orion remained in the cupboard, deaf to the hint.
“I come straight off to Mr. Rine,” she went on. “I didn’t even think to
take the joint from under my arm. I’d only bin gone ’arf an hour down
Tibbalds Row marketin’ with another lady--’er as is ’ousekeeper in
Chapel Street, where Mr. Wood lives. She could tell you the same. I’ll
take my Bible oath I wasn’t more’n ’arf an hour. The larst place I was
in was the fish shop at the corner of Devonshire Street.”
“We’d better go to Great Ormond Street,” I said to Orion.
The servant stood up, pulling her gray and black shawl closer round her
throat. She gave a critical glance round the room before she left, and
paid it her feminine tribute.
“You’ll excuse me,” she said, “but what a pretty room this is. Quite a
doll’s ’ouse, to be sure. I never see but one like it, and that was
Mrs. Abraham’s in North Street--’er whose ’usband was in the ready-made
line.”
It wouldn’t interest you to hear the rest, but I have all the
newspapers put aside if you would like to read the reports some day.
The murder of Mrs. Grigg was one of London’s many mysteries. There was
no clew. The servant was able to clear herself conclusively of all
suspicion. Scotland Yard was baffled. Ambitious journalists, with a
taste for intrigue and interviewing, started wild theories, and there
ended. Great Ormond Street was blocked with the crowd that gaped
stolidly all day at the shabby house with the drawn blinds opposite the
hospital.
Orion didn’t go to the City. He was junior partner--so he said--in a
shipping-house near London Bridge. He stayed at home in the jaunty room
with the pink-tinted gas globes and drank all day. Orion was in a bad
way. You might guess that when he drank whisky at three and something a
bottle as if it had been water.
We’ll skip the inquest and so on, and pass to the funeral.
Orion begged me to go, and I went. One couldn’t refuse a poor,
invertebrate, pleading fool like that. His aunt’s death had absolutely
doubled him up.
There was the uncomfortable atmosphere of death about the place when we
got there. I’ll show you the particular house next time we are in Great
Ormond Street. There is a narrow passage paneled to the ceiling with
wood that is painted stone color. There is a sitting room to your left
as you go in, and a flight of stairs ready to your feet at the end of
the passage.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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