Читать книгу Moss Rose - Bowen Marjorie - Страница 20

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The inquest on Daisy Arrow was a mere formality. In the official language of Superintendent Matchwell, this first enquiry into the murder elicited "no information which could assist the course of justice."

The inhabitants of No. 12, Great Hogarth Street, repeated the evidence which they had already given in private examination.

The Covent Garden greengrocer remembered Daisy Arrow—who was well known to him by sight—pausing with a companion to buy fruit late on Christmas Eve, but, owing to the fog and the ill illumination in his shop (he, being just on the point of closing, having turned the gas out, had fetched the fruit by the light of a candle), could not give a very satisfactory description of this same companion, who was muffled hi a light greatcoat, had his hands in his pockets, a scarf round his neck, and his hat pulled down over his eyes. He was well-dressed—the fruiterer had noticed that, because he had usually seen Daisy Arrow with men in shabby or flashy attire. But this stranger's clothes had been good, and he seemed a gentleman.

This evidence thus corroborated the impression given to Mrs. Bulke, to Belle Adair, and to the other women in the kitchen of No. 12 on the night of the murder, when they had heard the soft yet emphatic masculine tones in the passage above.

Another witness was the waiter at the Argyll Rooms. He deposed to having seen Daisy Arrow there on Christmas Eve. He had noticed that she drank a good deal more than was customary with her, and that in contradiction to her usual demeanour, she had been very excited and gay. Unfortunately this man, who seemed stupid and had great difficulty in expressing himself, had not taken much heed of Daisy Arrow's companion. He could only repeat that he had himself been tired, the place had been so noisy and so full of people and cigar smoke. Daisy Arrow had been with several gentlemen, exchanging jokes, merriment and drinks. He could recall that she had been drawn apart by a tall, well-dressed man, who seemed to be speaking to her in a foreign language. They had been talking earnestly and with great animation at one of the small tables in the alcove, but the waiter could give no description of the person of this gentleman.

Belle Adair, seated on the witnesses' bench in the ugly dull Coroner's Court, listened to all this futile evidence with a secret and exultant sense of power. She did not yet in the least know how she could make use of that glimpse of the stranger for whom the detective was searching, or of the Bible, still safely hidden in her carpet-bag, but the mere fact that she knew more than all the other people, more than the coroner or the detective or the police or any of the witnesses, gave her keen pleasure. The knowledge that they were all stumbling after she had—clearly and precisely. She could have described the wanted man with each detail of his attire. She could have drawn his portrait. She believed that, from the inscriptions in the German Bible, she knew his name, and something of his history.

She had given her own evidence in a quiet, respectful and regretful manner that she was sure had impressed the coroner. He had spoken to her in quite a different tone from that he had used to the other women. She was gratified that she had made a good effect in her shabby, neat clothes and her pale face devoid of paint—with her decorous veil and bonnet, and her bay-leaf-coloured hair knotted through the strings in the nape of her neck. She had persuaded them, she was almost sure, that she was an unfortunate gentlewoman and, only by accident, had found herself in such company as Mrs. Bulke kept at No. 12.

These false pretenses, however, which at first had seemed to her so secure, were shaken, and the woman herself was angered into both fear and rebellion by what she learned of the activities of the police who were employed on the case.

In the space of a very few days, Scotland Yard had discovered without difficulty, and produced as a matter of course the real identity of the people by whom Belle had been for some time surrounded; people who were very careful never to reveal, or even to hint at, what they really were behind their tricks and poses. The cool, matter-of-fact, disinterested evidence of the police destroyed all these gaudy shams, and named, with cool exactitude, people and things that Belle had tried never even to think of in their correct colours.

Even the dead woman was, as it were, pursued into her grave—unmasked and exposed. There was no such person as Daisy Arrow. It was Martha Owen—aged thirty-three, unmarried, with a child of eight years of age, formerly lodging in the Waterloo Road and in the Tottenham Court Road—well-known to the police—belonging to what was usually termed "an unfortunate class of woman," but branded now by a plainer name—who had had her throat cut at No. 12, Great Hogarth Street on Christmas Eve.

There was a plain name, too, for No. 12, and for Mrs. Bulke—Sarah Jones, also unmarried, who had been in prison twice, once in Exeter and once in Bodmin—formerly a circus rider, but for many years earning her living in a fashion which had frequently brought her to the notice of the police. To escape their warnings, she had moved frequently from place to place, changing her name but never her profession.

Minnie Palmer's name was Mary Jenkins. She, too, had been in prison, and the coroner spoke to her in a manner of kind rebuke that reduced her to passionate tears of sentimental vanity.

When Belle's turn had come to give evidence, she had thought bitterly—"I suppose they have found out all about me." Yet she wondered if that were possible. She had been, she was sure, so clever, covered up her tracks so adroitly. She was prepared to defy their utmost ingenuity—to lie and lie again.

But they did not drive her to this expedient, perhaps because she was unknown to the police and had never been involved in any criminal case. They accepted her as Belle Adair, an actress and dancer. She admitted that that was her stage name, but she had acted under others, Belle Beaumont, Rose Vere, and she had asked with a look of candour at the coroner which she endeavoured to render as appealing as possible, "Need I, sir, reveal my true name here? I have relatives, you understand—my family—"

The coroner replied that he could understand and respect her reason. She was allowed to retain her incognita. She thanked him graciously, and gave her evidence with satisfactory precision and clarity. Then that was over—an open verdict returned—"Murder against some person or persons unknown."