The Old Man in the CornerOrczy, Emmuska Orczy, Baroness
General
The Old Man in the Corner
Orczy, Emmuska Orczy, Baroness
Detective and mystery stories, English
"But the immediate result of Detective-Inspector Jones's labours was
that Mr. Arthur Greenhill, lithographer, was brought before the
magistrate at Bow Street on the charge of being concerned in the death
of Mrs. Owen, caretaker of the Rubens Studios, Percy Street.
"Now that magisterial inquiry is one of the few interesting ones which I
had the misfortune to miss," continued the man in the corner, with a
nervous shake of the shoulders. "But you know as well as I do how the
attitude of the young prisoner impressed the magistrate and police so
unfavourably that, with every new witness brought forward, his position
became more and more unfortunate.
"Yet he was a good-looking, rather coarsely built young fellow, with
one of those awful Cockney accents which literally make one jump. But he
looked painfully nervous, stammered at every word spoken, and repeatedly
gave answers entirely at random.
"His father acted as lawyer for him, a rough-looking elderly man, who
had the appearance of a common country attorney rather than of a London
solicitor.
"The police had built up a fairly strong case against the lithographer.
Medical evidence revealed nothing new: Mrs. Owen had died from exposure,
the blow at the back of the head not being sufficiently serious to cause
anything but temporary disablement. When the medical officer had been
called in, death had intervened for some time; it was quite impossible
to say how long, whether one hour or five or twelve.
"The appearance and state of the room, when the unfortunate woman was
found by Mr. Charles Pitt, were again gone over in minute detail. Mrs.
Owen's clothes, which she had worn during the day, were folded neatly on
a chair. The key of her cupboard was in the pocket of her dress. The
door had been slightly ajar, but both the windows were wide open; one of
them, which had the sash-line broken, had been fastened up most
scientifically with a piece of rope.
"Mrs. Owen had obviously undressed preparatory to going to bed, and the
magistrate very naturally soon made the remark how untenable the theory
of an accident must be. No one in their five senses would undress with a
temperature at below zero, and the windows wide open.
"After these preliminary statements the cashier of the Birkbeck was
called and he related the caretaker's visit at the bank.
"'It was then about one o'clock,' he stated. 'Mrs. Owen called and
presented a cheque to self for £827, the amount of her balance. She
seemed exceedingly happy and cheerful, and talked about needing plenty
of cash, as she was going abroad to join her nephew, for whom she would
in future keep house. I warned her about being sufficiently careful with
so large a sum, and parting from it injudiciously, as women of her class
are very apt to do. She laughingly declared that not only was she
careful of it in the present, but meant to be so for the far-off future,
for she intended to go that very day to a lawyer's office and to make a
will.'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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