“Mr. Hall, confectioner, of the same address, corroborated this statement, and Mr. Greenhill, with absolute triumph, produced a third witness, Mrs. Martin, of Percy Street, who from her window on the second floor had, at 7:30 a.m., seen the caretaker shaking mats outside her front door. The description this witness gave of Mrs. Owen’s getup, with the shawl round her head, coincided point by point with that given by Mr. and Mrs. Hall.
“After that Mr. Greenhill’s task became an easy one; his son was at home having his breakfast at 8 o’clock that morning—not only himself, but his servants would testify to that.
“The weather had been so bitter that the whole of that day Arthur had not stirred from his own fireside. Mrs. Owen was murdered after 8 a.m. on that day, since she was seen alive by three people at that hour, therefore his son could not have murdered Mrs. Owen. The police must find the criminal elsewhere, or else bow to the opinion originally expressed by the public that Mrs. Owen had met with a terrible untoward accident, or that perhaps she may have wilfully sought her own death in that extraordinary and tragic fashion.
“Before young Greenhill was finally discharged one or two witnesses were again examined, chief among these being the foreman of the glassworks. He had turned up at the Rubens Studios at 9 o’clock, and been in business all day. He averred positively that he did not specially notice any suspicious-looking individual crossing the hall that day. ‘But,’ he remarked with a smile, ‘I don’t sit and watch everyone who goes up and downstairs. I am too busy for that. The street door is always left open; anyone can walk in, up or down, who knows the way.’
“That there was a mystery in connection with Mrs. Owen’s death—of that the police have remained perfectly convinced; whether young Greenhill held the key of that mystery or not they have never found out to this day.
“I could enlighten them as to the cause of the young lithographer’s anxiety at the magisterial inquiry, but, I assure you, I do not care to do the work of the police for them. Why should I? Greenhill will never suffer from unjust suspicions. He and his father alone—besides myself—know in what a terribly tight corner he all but found himself.
“The young man did not reach home till nearly five o’clock that morning. His last train had gone; he had to walk, lost his way, and wandered about Hampstead for hours. Think what his position would have been if the worthy confectioners of Percy Street had not seen Mrs. Owen ‘wrapped up in a shawl, on her knees, doing the front steps.’
“Moreover, Mr. Greenhill senior is a solicitor, who has a small office in John Street, Bedford Row. The afternoon before her death Mrs. Owen had been to that office and had there made a will by which she left all her savings to young Arthur Greenhill, lithographer. Had that will been in other than paternal hands, it would have been proved, in the natural course of such things, and one other link would have been added to the chain which nearly dragged Arthur Greenhill to the gallows—‘the link of a very strong motive.’
“Can you wonder that the young man turned livid, until such time as it was proved beyond a doubt that the murdered woman was alive hours after he had reached the safe shelter of his home?
“I saw you smile when I used the word ‘murdered,’ ” continued the man in the corner, growing quite excited now that he was approaching the dénouement of his story. “I know that the public, after the magistrate had discharged Arthur Greenhill, were quite satisfied to think that the mystery in Percy Street was a case of accident—or suicide.”
“No,” replied Polly, “there could be no question of suicide, for two very distinct reasons.”
He looked at her with some degree of astonishment. She supposed that he was amazed at her venturing to form an opinion of her own.
“And may I ask what, in your opinion, these reasons are?” he asked very sarcastically.
“To begin with, the question of money,” she said—“has any more of it been traced so far?”
“Not another £5 note,” he said with a chuckle; “they were all cashed in Paris during the Exhibition, and you have no conception how easy a thing that is to do, at any of the hotels or smaller agents de change.”
“That nephew was a clever blackguard,” she commented.
“You believe, then, in the existence of that nephew?”
“Why should I doubt it? Someone must have existed who was sufficiently familiar with the house to go about in it in the middle of the day without attracting anyone’s attention.”
“In the middle of the day?” he said with a chuckle.
“Any time after 8:30 in the morning.”
“So you, too, believe in the ‘caretaker, wrapped up in a shawl,’ cleaning her front steps?” he queried.
“But—”
“It never struck you, in spite of the training your intercourse with me must have given you, that the person who carefully did all the work in the Rubens Studios, laid the fires and carried up the coals, merely did it in order to gain time; in order that the bitter frost might really and effectually do its work, and Mrs. Owen be not missed until she was truly dead.”
“But—” suggested Polly again.
“It never struck you that one of the greatest secrets of successful crime is to lead the police astray with regard to the time when the crime was committed. That was, if you remember, the great point in the Regent’s Park murder.
“In this
