Johnny Ludlow, Sixth Series

“Jane Cross! Jane Cross!” shouted the Squire, going forward towards the front hall, Susan following with the candle. It was a good-sized hall; I could see that, with a handsome well-staircase at this end of it.

“Halloa! What’s this? Johnny! Susan!—all of you come here! Here’s somebody lying here. It must be the poor girl. Goodness bless my heart! Johnny, help me to raise her!”

Still and white she was lying, underneath the opening of the staircase. Upon lifting her head, it fell back in a curious manner. We both backed a little. Susan held the candle nearer. As its light fell on the upturned face, the girl shrieked.

“She is in a fit,” cried Matilda.

“God help her!” whispered the Squire. “I fear this is something worse than a fit. We must have a doctor.”

Susan thrust the candlestick into my hand, and ran out at the back door, saying she’d fetch Mr. Lockett. Back she came in a moment: the garden gate was locked, and the key not in it.

“There’s the front door, girl,” stuttered the Squire, angry with her for returning, though it was no fault of hers. He was like one off his head, and his nose and cheeks had turned blue.

But there could be no more exit by the front door than by the back. It was locked, and the key gone. Who had done these things? what strange mystery was here? Locking the poor girl in the house to kill her!

Matilda, who had lighted another candle, found the key of the back gate lying on the kitchen dresser. Susan caught it up, and flew away. It was a most uncomfortable moment. There lay Jane Cross, pale and motionless, and it seemed that we were helpless to aid her.

“Ask that stupid thing to bring a pillow or a cushion, Johnny! Ghosts, indeed! The idiots that women are!”

“What else has done it? what else was there to hurt her?” remonstrated Matilda, bringing up the second candle. “She wouldn’t fall into a fit for nothing, sir.”

And now that more light was present, we began to see other features of the scene. Nearly close to Jane Cross lay a work-basket, overturned, a flat, open basket, a foot and a half square. Reels of cotton, scissors, tapes, small bundles of work tied up, and such-like things lay scattered around.

The Squire looked at these, and then at the opening above. “Can she have fallen down the well?” he asked, in a low tone. And Matilda, catching the words, gave a cry of dismay, and burst into tears.

“A pillow, girl! A pillow, or a cushion!”

She went into one of the sitting-rooms and brought out a sofa-cushion. The Squire, going down on his knees, for he was not good at stooping, told me to slip it under while he raised the head.

A sound of feet, a sudden flash of light from a bull’s-eye, and a policeman came upon the scene. The man was quietly passing on his beat when met by Susan. In her excitement she told him what had happened, and sent him in. We knew the man, whose beat lay at this end of Saltwater; a civil man, named Knapp. He knelt down where the Squire had just been kneeling, touching Jane Cross here and there.

“She’s dead, sir,” he said. “There can be no mistake about that.”

“She must have fallen down the well of the staircase, I fear,” observed the Squire.

“Well—yes; perhaps so,” assented the man in a doubtful tone. “But what of this?”

He flung the great light in front of poor Jane Cross’s dress. A small portion of the body, where the gown fastened in front, had been torn away, as well as one of the wristbands.

“It’s no fall,” said the man. “It’s foul play—as I think.”

“Goodness bless me!” gasped the Squire. “Some villains must have got in. This comes of that other one’s having left the front door on the latch.” But I am not sure that any of us, including himself, believed she could be really dead.

Susan returned with speed, and was followed by Mr. Lockett. He was a young man, thirty perhaps, pale and quiet, and much like what I remembered of his brother. Poor Jane Cross was certainly dead, he said—had been dead, he thought, an hour.

But this could scarcely have been, as we knew. It was not, at the very utmost, above twenty-five minutes since Matilda went out to fetch the beer, leaving her alive and well. Mr. Lockett looked again, but thought he was not mistaken. When a young doctor takes up a crotchet, he likes to hold to it.

A nameless sensation of awe fell upon us all. Dead! In that sudden manner! The Squire rubbed up his head like a helpless lunatic; Susan’s eyes were round with horror; Matilda had thrown her apron over her face to hide its grief and tears.

Leaving her for the present where she was, we turned to go upstairs. I stooped to pick up the overturned basket, but the policeman sharply told me to let all things remain as they were until he had time to look into them.

The first thing the man did, on reaching the landing above, was to open the room doors one by one, and throw his bull’s-eye light into them. They were all right, unoccupied, straight and tidy. On the landing of the upper floor lay one or two articles, which seemed to indicate that some kind of struggle had taken place there. A thimble here, a bodkin there, also the bit that had been torn out of the girl’s gown in front, and the wristband from the sleeve. The balustrades were very handsome, but very low; on this upper landing, dangerously low. These bedrooms were all in order; the one in which the two servants slept, alone showing signs of occupation.

Downstairs went Knapp again, carrying with him the torn-out pieces, to compare them with the gown. It was the print gown I had often seen Jane Cross wear, a black gown with white zigzag lines running down it. Matilda was wearing the fellow to it now. The pieces fitted in exactly.

“The struggle must have taken place upstairs: not here,” observed the doctor.

Matilda, questioned and cross-questioned by the policeman, gave as succinct an account of the evening as her distressed state allowed. We stood round the kitchen while she told it.

Neither she nor Jane Cross had gone out at all that day. Monday was rather a busy day with them, for they generally did a bit of washing. After tea, which they took between four and five o’clock, they went up to their bedroom, it being livelier there than in the kitchen, the window looking down the side road. Matilda sat down to write a letter to her brother, who lived at a distance; Jane Cross sat at the window doing a job of sewing. They sat there all the evening, writing, working, and sometimes talking. At dusk, Jane remarked that it was getting blind man’s holiday, and that she should go on downstairs and lay the supper. Upon that, Matilda finished her letter quickly, folded and directed it, and followed her down. Jane had not yet laid the cloth, but was then taking it out of the drawer. “You go and fetch the beer, Matilda,” she said: and Matilda was glad to do so. “You can’t go that way: I have locked the gate,” Jane called out, seeing Matilda turning towards the back; accordingly she went out at the front door, leaving it on the latch. Such was her account; and I have given it almost verbatim.

“On the latch,” repeated the policeman, taking up the words. “Does that mean that you left it open?”

“I drew it quite to, so that it looked as if it were shut; it was a heavy door, and would keep so,” was Matilda’s answer. “I did it, not to give Jane the trouble to open it to me. When I got back I found it shut and could not get in.”

The policeman mused. “You say it was Jane Cross who locked the back door in the wall?”

“Yes,” said Matilda. “She had locked it before I got downstairs. We liked to lock that door early, because it could be opened from the outside—while the front door could not be.”

“And she had not put these things on the table when you went out for the beer?”—pointing to the dishes.

“No: she was only then putting the cloth. As I turned round from taking the beer-jug from its hook, the fling she gave the cloth caused the air to whiffle in my face like a wind. She had not begun to reach out the dishes.”

“How long were you away?”

“I don’t know exactly,” she answered, with a moan. “Rather longer than usual, because I took my letter to the post before going to the Swan.”

“It was about ten minutes,” I interposed. “I was at the window next door, and saw Matilda go out and come back.”

“Ten minutes!” repeated the policeman. “Quite long enough for some ruffian to come in and fling her over the stairs.”

“But who would do it?” asked Matilda, looking up at him with her poor pale face.

“Ah, that’s the question; that’s what we must find out,” said Knapp. “Was the kitchen just as it was when you left it?”

“Yes—except that she had put the bread and cheese on the table. And the glasses, and knives,” added the girl, looking round at the said table, which remained as we had found it, “but not the plates.”

“Well now, to go to something else: Did she bring her work-basket downstairs with her from the bedroom when she remarked to you that she would go and put the supper on?”

“No, she did not.”

“You are sure of that?”

“Yes. She left the basket on the chair in front of her where it had been standing. She just got up and shook the threads from off her gown, and went on down. When I left the room the basket was there; I saw it. And I think,” added the girl, with a great sob, “I think that while laying the supper she must have gone upstairs again to fetch the basket, and must have fallen against the banisters with fright, and overbalanced herself.”

“Fright at what?” asked Knapp.

Matilda shivered. Susan whispered to him that they were afraid at night of seeing the ghost of Mr. Edmund Peahern.

The man glanced keenly at Matilda for a minute. “Did you ever see it?” he asked.

“No,” she shuddered. “But there are strange noises, and we think it is in the house.”

“Well,” said Knapp, coughing to hide a comical smile, “ghosts don’t tear pieces out of gowns—that ever I heard of. I should say it was something worse than a ghost that has been here to-night. Had this poor girl any sweetheart?”

“No,” said Matilda.

“Have you one?”

“No.”

“Except Owen the milkman.”

A red streak flashed into Matilda’s cheeks. I knew Owen: he was Mrs. Blair’s milkman also.

“I think Owen must be your sweetheart or hers,” went on Knapp. “I’ve seen him, often enough, talking and laughing with you both when bringing the afternoon’s milk round. Ten minutes at a stretch he has stayed in this garden, when he need not have been as many moments.”

“There has been no harm: and it’s nothing to anybody,” said Matilda.

The key of the front door was searched for, high and low; but it could not be found. Whoever locked the door, must have made off with the key. But for that, and for the evidences of the scuffle above and the pieces torn out of the gown, we should have thought Matilda’s opinion was correct: that Jane Cross had gone upstairs for her basket, and through some wretched accident had pitched over the balustrades. Matilda could not relinquish the notion.

“It was only a week ago that ever was—a week ago this very day—that Jane Cross nearly fell over there. We were both running upstairs, trying in sport which should get first into our bedroom; and, in jostling one another on the landing, she all but overbalanced herself. I caught hold of her to save her. It’s true—if it were the last word I had to speak.”

Matilda broke down, with a dreadful fit of sobbing. Altogether she struck me as being about as excitable a young woman as one could meet in a summer day’s journey.

Nothing more could be made out of it this evening. Jane Cross had met her death, and some evil or other must have led to it. The police took possession of the house for the night: and Matilda, out of compassion, was brought to ours. To describe the Mater’s shock and Mary Blair’s, when they heard the news, would be beyond me.

All sorts of conjectures arose in the neighbourhood. The most popular belief was that some person must have perceived the front door open, and, whether with a good or a bad intention, entered the house; that he must have stolen upstairs, met Jane Cross on the top landing, and flung her down in a scuffle. That he must then have let himself out at the front door and locked it after him.

Against this theory there were obstacles. From the time of Matilda’s leaving the house till her return, certainly not more than ten minutes had elapsed, perhaps not quite as much, and this was a very short space of time for what had been done in it. Moreover the chances were that I, sitting at the next window, should have seen any one going in or out; though it was not of course certain. I had got up once to ring the bell, and stayed a minute or two away from the window, talking with Mary Blair and the Mater.

Some people thought the assassin (is it too much to call him so?) had been admitted by Jane Cross herself; or he might have been in hiding in the garden before she locked the door. In short, the various opinions would fill a volume.

But suspicion fell chiefly upon one person—and that was Thomas Owen the milkman. Though, perhaps, “suspicion” is too strong a word to give to it—I ought rather to say “doubt.” These Owens were originally from Wales, very respectable people. The milk business was their own; and, since the father’s death, which happened only a few months before, the son had carried it on in conjunction with his mother. He was a young man of three or four and twenty, with a fresh colour and open countenance, rather superior in manners and education. The carrying out the milk himself was a temporary arrangement, the boy employed for it being ill. That he had often lingered at No. 7, laughing with the two young women, was well known; he had also been seen to accost them in the street. Only the previous day, he and Matilda had stayed talking in the churchyard after morning service when everybody else had left it; and he had walked up nearly as far as Seaboard Terrace with Jane Cross in the evening. A notion existed that he had entered the house on the Monday evening, for who else was it likely to have been, cried everybody. Which was, of course, logic. At last a rumour arose—arose on the Tuesday—that Owen had been seen to leave the house at dusk on the fatal evening; that this could be proved. If so, it looked rather black. I was startled, for I had liked the man.

The next day, Wednesday, the key was found. A gardener who did up the gardens of the other end house, No. 1, every Wednesday, was raking the ground underneath some dwarf pines that grew close against the front railings, and raked out a big door-key. About a dozen people came rushing off with it to No. 7.

It was the missing key. It fitted into the door at once, locked and unlocked it. When the villain had made his way from the house after doing the mischief, he must have flung the key over amidst the pines, thinking no doubt it would lie hidden there.

The coroner and jury assembled; but they could not make more of the matter than we had made. Jane Cross had died of the fall down the well-staircase, which had broken her neck; and it was pretty evident she had been flung down. Beyond the one chief and fatal injury, she was not harmed in any way; not by so much as a scratch. Matilda, whose surname turned out to be Valentine, having got over the first shock, gave her testimony with subdued composure. She was affected at parts of it, and said she would have saved Jane Cross’s life with her own: and no one could doubt that she spoke the truth. She persisted in asserting her opinion that there had been no scuffle, in spite of appearances; but that the girl had been terrified in some way and had accidentally fallen over.

When Matilda was done with, Thomas Owen took her place. He was all in black, having dressed himself to come to the inquest and wearing mourning for his father; and I must say, looking at him now, you’d never have supposed he carried out milk-pails.

Yes, he had known the poor young woman in question, he readily said in answer to questions; had been fond of chaffing with the two girls a bit, but nothing more. Meant nothing by it, nothing serious. Respected both of them; regarded them as perfectly well-conducted young women.—Was either of them his sweetheart? Certainly not. Had not courted either of them. Never thought of either of them as his future wife: should not consider a servant eligible for that position—at least, his mother would not. Of the two, he had liked Jane Cross the best. Did not know anything whatever of the circumstances attending the death; thought it a most deplorable calamity, and was never more shocked in his life than when he heard of it.

“Is there any truth in the report that you were at the house on Monday evening?” asked the coroner.

“There is no truth in it.”

“I see him come out o’ No. 7: I see him come out o’ the side door in the garden wall,” burst forth a boy’s earnest voice from the back of the room.

“You saw me not come out of it,” quietly replied Thomas Owen, turning round to see who it was that had spoken. “Oh, it is you, is it, Bob Jackson! Yes, you came running round the corner just as I turned from the door.”

“You were there, then?” cried the coroner.

“No, sir. At the door, yes; that’s true enough; but I was not inside it. What happened was this: on Monday I had some business at a farmhouse near Munpler, and set out to walk over there early in the evening. In passing down the side road by No. 7, I saw the two maids at the top window. One of them—I think it was Jane Cross—called out to ask me in a joking kind of way whether I was about to pay them a visit; I answered, not then, but I would as I came back if they liked. Accordingly, in returning, I rang the bell. It was not answered, and I rang again with a like result. Upon that, I went straight home to my milk books, and did not stir out again, as my mother can prove. That is the truth, sir, on my oath; and the whole truth.”

“What time was this?”

“I am not quite sure. It was getting dusk.”

“Did you see anything of the young women this second time?”

“Not anything.”

“Or hear anything?—Any noise?”

“None whatever. I supposed that they would not come to the door to me because it was late: I thought nothing else. I declare, sir, that this is all I know of the matter.”

There was a pause when he concluded. Knapp, the policeman, and another one standing by his side, peered at Owen from under their eyebrows, as if they did not put implicit faith in his words: and the coroner recalled Matilda Valentine.

She readily confirmed the statement of his having passed along the side road, and Jane Cross’s joking question to him. But she denied having heard him ring on his return, and said the door-bell had not rung at all that night. Which would seem to prove that Owen must have rung during the time she had gone out for the beer.

So, you perceive, the inquest brought forth no more available light, and had to confess itself baffled.

“A fine termination this is to our pleasure,” cried the Squire, gloomily. “I don’t like mysteries, Johnny. And of all the mysteries I have come across in my life, the greatest mystery is this at No. 7.”