Where would a woman like Mrs. Inglethorne keep papers? Or did she keep papers at all? He tried to remember the habits of her type, acquired at secondhand from his fortuitous acquaintances in Dartmoor Prison. Under her bed? But the police had obviously rolled up the mattress and made that elementary examination. There was nothing here—nothing. He opened the big black box, disparagingly. And then he saw, with a quickening interest, that the inside of the lid was almost covered by newspaper cuttings which had been pasted on the wood. Here was revealed Mrs. Inglethorne’s “scrapbook,” and incidentally her favourite daydreams. A headline caught his eye.
“Heiress Traced by Her Baby Sock!”
Another headline ran:
“Child’s Mother Tracked by Initial on Infant’s Gown.”
He carried the lamp to a little table and read the cuttings carefully. They all dealt with one subject: the identification of unknown children that had brought fabulous fortunes to the lucky person who had traced their descent. Some of the cuttings were very old, yellow with age and scarcely decipherable. Evidently Mrs. Ingletorne’s collection covered a long period.
He supposed the police had searched the box, which was nearly filled with little cylinder-shaped budles tied around with tape. Linen, coarse calico, cotton—diving into the mass, his fingers touched silk. The bundles had once been white, but constant fingering and dust had left them an indescribable hue. He untied a bundle and opened it. It consisted of a child’s cotton nighdress, a little pair of woollen shoes, and a small knitted shawl. Pinned to the shoes was a scrap of paper on which was written in an illiterate hand the words: “Mrs. Larse boy, 10 days old, measles 9 months.” Here then was the beginning and end of Mrs. Larse’s boy. “Measles 9 months” was his epitaph.
She was a baby farmer; he had guessed that. He opened another bundle hopefully. Somewhere here would be a reference to Elizabeth. The second package had nothing but a coarse calico robe and a penned inscription: “Young girl named Leavey, 5 days, whooping cough 6 weeks.” One by one he unrolled these little tragedies, and few indeed were they who had not their death certificates inscribed laconically at the end. Some had two papers, identically inscribed. He supposed that the repetition was due to Mrs. Inglethorne’s careless and haphazard system of “bookkeeping.”
He had examined twelve and took out the thirteenth, wondering what potency there was in that lucky or unlucky number. The nightdress he unrolled was of the finest linen, the most expensive of all he had examined. The shawl was of heavy silk, and the microscopic shirt of the most delicate flannel. For some time he could not find the inscription, but eventually it was discovered inside the shawl. Only three words, but they set his heart beating:
“Miss Martha’s girl.”
The bundle dropped from his nerveless hands. “Miss Martha’s—girl!”
He took the letter out of his pocket. “I have found a home for your son.” He read again the pencilled words “Martha’s servant.” And Martha’s servant was—Mrs. Inglethorne!
Miss Martha’s girl. This woman could not have made a mistake. One by one he examined the clothes separately, and then, pinned to the inside of the dress, near the collar, he found a second paper written in the same hand, and, reading it, he uttered a hoarse cry.
“Miss Martha’s girl Elizabeth.”
Feverishly he untied the other bundles, but found no further clue. His knees were trembling as he mounted the stairs, the precious garments close to his heart. Putting down the lamp on the table, he examined again these pitiful souvenirs. He must see Leslie at once. Not daring to leave the clothes behind, he folded them and put them into his pocket. He used the silk shawl as a neckcloth under his thin overcoat; the night was bitterly cold, but it was not the warmth of the soft fabric which brought a glow to his heart.
The windows of the flat were in darkness, but he remembered that they had heavy velvet curtains, and possibly they were drawn. Ringing the bell, he waited. There was no answer. He rang again. And then a man appeared from a nearby doorway and strolled up to him.
“Who do you want?” he asked in a tone of authority. Peter guessed that he was a detective.
“I want Miss Maughan. My name is Dawlish.”
“Oh, Dawlish, yes. Miss Maughan isn’t in. She is staying at Inspector Coldwell’s house in Finchley. There is nobody in the flat.”
He did not hide his disappointment; he was so full of his discovery that he had to tell somebody. He had to see her. The detective gave him the inspector’s address, and he walked across the Charing Cross Road, intending to make his way to the Tube station. He reached the other side of the road, and then something made him look back at the windows of her apartments. And in that instant he saw a quick flicker of light, as though somebody had turned on an electric hand-lamp for the fraction of a second and had extinguished it immediately.
Peter stopped. Somebody was in Leslie’s room. He walked slowly across the road. The detective had disappeared; was, in point of fact, walking to the back of the block to visit his fellow-watcher. As Peter stood, hesitating, he saw the street door move slightly, and, acting on an impulse, he pushed it wide open and took one step into the darkness.
“Who’s there?” he said, and that was all that he remembered.
Something soft and heavy fell with a thud on his head, crushing his soft hat as though it were paper. He stumbled on to his knees, and a second blow laid him prostrate, the blood trickling down his face and staining the soft silk that had once enwrapped his child.
There were no loiterers in Charing Cross Road that bitter night, when a chill northeast wind sent people hurrying to the shelter of their homes. There was no lounger to tell the detective of three people
