Detective and mystery stories; Jack, the Ripper -- Fiction; Serial murders -- Fiction; Whitechapel (London, England) -- Fiction
“Oh, yes,” said Daisy, and she shuddered a little. “That was the
wicked, wicked woman what killed a pretty little baby and its mother.
They’ve got her in Madame Tussaud’s. But Ellen, she won’t let me go to
the Chamber of Horrors. She wouldn’t let father take me there last time
I was in London. Cruel of her, I called it. But somehow I don’t feel as
if I wanted to go there now, after having been here!”
“Well,” said Chandler slowly, “we’ve a case full of relics of Mrs.
Pearce. But the pram the bodies were found in, that’s at Madame
Tussaud’s—at least so they claim, I can’t say. Now here’s something
just as curious, and not near so dreadful. See that man’s jacket
there?”
“Yes,” said Daisy falteringly. She was beginning to feel oppressed,
frightened. She no longer wondered that the Indian gentleman had been
taken queer.
“A burglar shot a man dead who’d disturbed him, and by mistake he went
and left that jacket behind him. Our people noticed that one of the
buttons was broken in two. Well, that don’t seem much of a clue, does
it, Miss Daisy? Will you believe me when I tells you that that other
bit of button was discovered, and that it hanged the fellow? And ’twas
the more wonderful because all three buttons was different!”
Daisy stared wonderingly, down at the little broken button which had
hung a man. “And whatever’s that!” she asked, pointing to a piece of
dirty-looking stuff.
“Well,” said Chandler reluctantly, “that’s rather a horrible thing—that
is. That’s a bit o’ shirt that was buried with a woman—buried in the
ground, I mean—after her husband had cut her up and tried to burn her.
’Twas that bit o’ shirt that brought him to the gallows.”
“I considers your museum’s a very horrid place!” said Daisy pettishly,
turning away.
She longed to be out in the passage again, away from this brightly
lighted, cheerful-looking, sinister room.
But her father was now absorbed in the case containing various types of
infernal machines. “Beautiful little works of art some of them are,”
said his guide eagerly, and Bunting could not but agree.
“Come along—do, father!” said Daisy quickly. “I’ve seen about enough
now. If I was to stay in here much longer it ’ud give me the horrors. I
don’t want to have no nightmares to-night. It’s dreadful to think there
are so many wicked people in the world. Why, we might knock up against
some murderer any minute without knowing it, mightn’t we?”
“Not you, Miss Daisy,” said Chandler smilingly. “I don’t suppose you’ll
ever come across even a common swindler, let alone anyone who’s
committed a murder—not one in a million does that. Why, even I have
never had anything to do with a proper murder case!”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account