"Prithee, Sarah," begged Mrs Love, "go and fetch a smith to open Mrs Duncomb's door." "I will go at all speed," Sarah assured her, with ready willingness, and off she sped. Mrs Love and Mrs Rhymer waited some time. Sarah came back with Mrs Oliphant in tow, but had been unable to secure the services of a locksmith. This was probably due to the fact that it was a Sunday. By now both Mrs Love and Mrs Rhymer had become deeply apprehensive, and the former appealed to Mrs Oliphant. "I do believe they are all dead, and the smith is not come!" cried Mrs Love. "What shall we do, Mrs Oliphant?" Mrs Oliphant, much younger than the others, seems to have been a woman of resource. She had from Mr Twysden, she said, the key of the vacant chambers opposite to Mrs Duncomb's. "Now let me see," she continued, "if I cannot get out of the back chamber window into the gutter, and so into Mrs Duncomb's apartment." The other women urged her to try.[17] Mrs Oliphant set off, her heels echoing in the empty rooms. Presently the waiting women heard a pane snap, and they guessed that Mrs Oliphant had broken through Mrs Duncomb's casement to get at the handle. They heard, through the door, the noise of furniture being moved as she got through the window. Then came a shriek, the scuffle of feet. The outer door of Mrs Duncomb's chambers was flung open. Mrs Oliphant, ashen-faced, appeared on the landing. "God! Oh, gracious God!" she cried. "They're all murdered!" II All four women pressed into the chambers. All three of the women occupying them had been murdered. In the passage or lobby little Nanny Price lay in her bed in a welter of blood, her throat savagely cut. Her hair was loose and over her eyes, her clenched hands all bloodied about her throat. It was apparent that she had struggled desperately for life. Next door, in the dining-room, old Betty Harrison lay across the press-bed in which she usually slept. Being in the habit of keeping her gown on for warmth, as it was said, she was partially dressed. She had been strangled, it seemed, "with an apron-string or a pack-thread," for there was a deep crease about her neck and the bruised indentations as of knuckles. In her bedroom, also across her bed, lay the dead body of old Mrs Duncomb. There had been here also an attempt to strangle, an unnecessary attempt it appeared, for the crease about the neck was very faint. Frail as the old lady had been, the mere weight of the murderer's body, it was conjectured, had been enough to kill her.