Читать книгу The Attic Murder - S. Fowler Wright - Страница 6

CHAPTER FOUR

With some trepidation, only partially controlled, Mrs. Benson brought up the supper.

It was a condition of which her lodger might have been less observant had he not already heard the suspicions which had been suggested to her. He had resolved that he would say nothing to confirm them, but rather aim to confuse her with a doubt as to whether her neighbour’s accusation might be no more than a baseless guess, and he was therefore careful to give no sign of observing her agitation. He talked in a casual manner of trivial indifferent things, as one who had the leisure of an unoccupied mind.

The evening had turned wet as the dusk fell, and now the rattling of the ill-fitting window-frame, and the beat of heavy rain on the glass, gave him a good excuse as he said: “I don’t think I’ll go out to fetch my luggage tonight, Mrs. Benson, if you don’t mind.... I shall have to go to the bank in the morning, and I can do everything at the same time.... I daresay I can manage somehow till then.... And I’ll settle up tomorrow for the first week We’re strangers to one another as yet, so I’d rather have it that way, though I hope you’ll get to know me better before long.”

Mrs. Benson was flutteringly acquiescent in her replies. “Yes, sir. It’s for you to say, sir.... Yes, sir. I hope you will. If there’s anything that I could do. Would you like the paper, sir, if as how you’ll be sitting quiet? There’s no one else coming in tonight till the last thing.... Yes, sir, thank you. I wouldn’t ask, but the truth is I’ve been doing that bad since Mr. Michaelson left.... But I’ll bring it up if you’ll be wanting something to read.”

The last offer, which had had its birth in Janet Brown’s livelier brain, was brought out, and repeated, in nervous haste, like a lesson learned. But Mr. Edwards still appeared to notice nothing strange in his landlady’s manners or speech. He said pleasantly that he should like to see it, if it wouldn’t be robbing her. And when she came up, half an hour later, to clear the table, and bringing the final edition of the Evening News, he restrained the half-fearful desire he had to see the published account of his trial and subsequent escape, turning to the sporting page in a desultory manner, until the table was cleared, and she had left the room.

The report itself was not long, the detailed interest of the case having been the news of the previous day, when the evidence had been heard. It consisted mainly of a skilfully condensed summary of the Judge’s address to the jury, the time during which they had been absent from court, and other similar details with which he was already too familiar to give them more than one swift comprehending glance, which went on to where, in bolder type, was the news of his own escape.

It gave him a thrill of exaltation, overcoming for one brief moment the misery that possessed his mind, to realize the extent and energy of the futile search which was being made while he remained within two hundred yards of the headquarters of the baffled power of the law.

But the feeling changed to a greater depression with realization of the desperation of his position, as he went on to read the accurate description of himself which the police had been prompt to communicate to the Press.

He saw a portrait also, which might have been more exact had the artist not thought it necessary to give him a cunningly ingratiating expression, less natural to himself than to the character which the jury’s verdict had fixed upon him.

But for that overheard conversation, he would have walked out at once, trusting to darkness and rain, and regardless of all beside under the urgent fear that the hunted have. As it was, he wondered with what object the newspaper had been brought. If it had been meant as a test, he thought that his demeanour must have puzzled the woman, though, with that detailed description to support suspicion already formed, it could hardly have had a more negative result.

Was it possible that it had been brought up in simplicity and goodwill, without previous reading of the exposure which it contained? Remembering what he had heard, he put the idea aside. The improbability was too great.

But the issue of all his doubts was to resolve that it would be a less risk to remain in his present quarters till morning came than to wander penniless in the rain through the midnight hours.

He went up to a better bed than the jail authorities would have provided, with little expectation that sleep would be quick to come, and was conscious of nothing more till he saw the light of the winter dawn invading a dingy room.