liceman rang and knocked at the door till a
slatternly servant girl came down looking more than half asleep. The
constable pointed out the contents of the area to the maid, who screamed
loudly enough to wake up the street, but she knew nothing of the man;
had never seen him at the house, and so forth. Meanwhile the original
discoverer had come back with a medical man, and the next thing was to
get into the area. The gate was open, so the whole quartet stumped down
the steps. The doctor hardly needed a moment's examination; he said the
poor fellow had been dead for several hours, and it was then the case
began to get interesting. The dead man had not been robbed, and in one
of his pockets were papers identifying him as--well, as a man of good
family and means, a favourite in society, and nobody's enemy, so far as
could be known. I don't give his name, Villiers, because it has nothing
to do with the story, and because it's no good raking up these affairs
about the dead when there are no relations living. The next curious
point was that the medical men couldn't agree as to how he met his
death. There were some slight bruises on his shoulders, but they were so
slight that it looked as if he had been pushed roughly out of the
kitchen door, and not thrown over the railings from the street or even
dragged down the steps. But there were positively no other marks of
violence about him, certainly none that would account for his death; and
when they came to the autopsy there wasn't a trace of poison of any
kind. Of course the police wanted to know all about the people at Number
20, and here again, so I have heard from private sources, one or two
other very curious points came out. It appears that the occupants of the
house were a Mr. and Mrs. Charles Herbert; he was said to be a landed
proprietor, though it struck most people that Paul Street was not
exactly the place to look for county gentry. As for Mrs. Herbert, nobody
seemed to know who or what she was, and, between ourselves, I fancy the
divers after her history found themselves in rather strange waters. Of
course they both denied knowing anything about the deceased, and in
default of any evidence against them they were discharged. But some very
odd things came out about them. Though it was between five and six in
the morning when the dead man was removed, a large crowd had collected,
and several of the neighbours ran to see what was going on. They were
pretty free with their c