Her cousin was not there; she heard
future husband; a yearning for the kindly
angry voices overhead and saw the two maid
presence of her childhood’s companion,
servants affrighted on the stairs; a disturbance united in the resolute words she whispered
was unknown in this household.
into her pillow during that bitter night: “I can While Elisa stood bewildered, a door
never marry him now!”
banged, and Captain Hoare came down, red in
The next day it snowed heavily. A
the face and fuming; he caught his cousin’s
strange elation was in Elisa’s heart as she
arm and hurried her out of the house.
descended to the warm parlor, bright from the
In an angry voice, he told her of the
fire and light from the glow of the snow
unwarrantable behavior of Mr. Orford. who
without.
had found him in the hall and called him
She was going to tell her father that
“intruder” and “spy” without waiting for an
she could not carry out her engagement with
explanation; the soldier had followed the Mr. Orford and that she did not want to even scholar up to his cabinet and there had been an go into his house again.
angry scene about nothing at all, as Captain
They were all gathered round the
Hoare said.
breakfast-table when Captain Hoare came in
“Oh, Philip,” broke out poor Elisa, as
late (he had been out to get a news-letter) and they hastened through the cold darkness, “I
brought the news that was the most unlooked
can never, never marry him!”
for they could conceive, and that was soon to
And she told him the story of Flora
startle all London.
Orford. The young man pressed her arm
Mr. Orford had been found murdered
through the heavy cloak.
in his cabinet.
“And how came such a one to entangle
These tidings, though broken as
thee?” he asked tenderly. “Nay, thou shall not
carefully as possible, threw the little
marry him.”
household into the deepest consternation;
They spoke no more, but Elisa, happy
there were shrieks and cryings and runnings to
in the protecting and wholesome presence of
and fro.
her kinsman, sobbed with a sense of relief and
Only Miss Minden, though of a ghastly
gratitude. When they reached home they color, made no especial display of grief; she
All-Story Weekly
10
was thinking of Flora Orford.
spillings of grease on the desk. The supper-
When the doctor could get away from
tray stood at the other end of the room and
his agitated womenkind, he went, with his
most of the food had been eaten, most of the
nephew, to the house of Mr. Orford.
wine drunk, and the articles were all there in
The story of the murder was a mystery.
order, excepting only the knife, sticking
The scholar had been found in his chair in
between Mr. Orford’s shoulder-blades.
front of his desk with one of his own bread-
When Captain Hoare had passed the
knives sticking through his shoulders: and house on his return from buying the news-there was nothing to throw any light as to how
letter he had seen the crowd and gone in and
or through whom he had met his death.
been able to say that he had been the last
The story, sifted from the mazed person to see the murdered man alive, as, he incoherency of Mrs. Boyd, the hysterics of the
had had his sharp encounter with Mr. Orford
maids, the commentaries of the police about ten o’clock, and he remembered seeing constables, and the chatter of the neighbors,
the supper things in the room.
ran thus:
The scholar had heard him below,
At half past nine the night before Mrs.
unlocked the door, and called out such
Boyd had sent one of the maids up with her
impatient resentment of his presence that
master’s supper. It was his whim to have it
Philip had come angrily up the stairs and
always thus served, on a tray, in the cabinet.
followed him into the cabinet; a few angry
There had been wine and meat, bread
words had passed when Mr. Orford had
and cheese, fruit and cakes, the usual plates
practically pushed his visitor out, locking the and silver among these the knife that had
door in his face and bidding him take Miss
killed Mr. Orford.
Minden home.
When the servant left, the scholar had
This threw no light at all on the
followed her to the door and locked it after
murder. It only went to prove that at ten
her. This was also a common practise of his, a
o’clock Mr. Orford had been alive and locked
precaution against any possible interruption.
in his cabinet.
For, he said, he did the best part of his work in Now here was the mystery; in the
the evening.
morning the door was still locked, on the
It was found next morning that his bed
inside; the window was, as it had been since had not been slept in and that the library door early evening, shuttered and fastened across
was still locked. As the alarmed Mrs. Boyd
with an iron bar, on the inside; and the room could get no answer to her knocks, the man-being on an upper floor, access would have
servant had sent for some one to force the
been almost impossible by the window, which
lock, and Humphrey Orford had been found in
gave on to the smooth brickwork of the front
his chair, leaning forward ever his papers,
of the house.
with the knife thrust into the hilt between his Neither was there any possible place in
shoulders. He must have died instantly, for
the room where any one might be hidden. It
there was no sign of any struggle, any was just a square, lined with the shallow book-disarrangement of his person or his papers.
shelves, the two pictures (that somber little
The first doctor to see him—a passer by, one looking strange now above the bent back attracted by the commotion about the house—
of the dead man), the desk, one or two chairs,
said he must have been dead some hours and side-tables. There was not as much as a probably the night before. The candles had all
cupboard or bureau, not a hiding-place for a
burned down to the socket, and there were
cat.
Crimes of Old London: The Scoured Silk 11
How, then, had the murderer entered
what she had told Elisa Minden—the affair
and left the room?
was twenty years ago, and the gallows bird
Suicide, of course, was out of the had no kith or kin left.
question, owing to the nature of the wound.
But Miss Minden remained convinced
Murder seemed equally out of the question.
that the story of Flora Orford had to do with
Mr. Orford sat so close to the wall that the
the death of her husband.
handle of the knife touched the panel behind
This poor
lady fell into a desperate
him. For any one to have stood between him
state of agitation, a swift change from her first and the wall would have been impossible;
stricken calm. She wanted Mr. Orford’s house
behind the back of his chair was not space
pulled down, the library and all its contents
enough to push a walking-stick.
burned. Her own wedding-dress she did burn,
How, then, had the blow been in frenzied silence, and none dare stop her.
delivered with such deadly precision and She resisted her father’s entreaties that she force?
should go away directly after the inquest; she
Not by any one standing in front of
would stay on the spot, she said, until the
Mr. Orford; first, because he must have seen
mystery was solved.
them and sprung up; and secondly, because,
The truth was that she was afraid that
even had he been asleep with his head down,
Philip Hoare would come under suspicion as
no one, not even a very tall man, could have
having been the last man to speak to Mr.
leaned over the top of the desk and driven in
Orford and as having quarreled with him, as
the knife, for experiment was made and it was
the maid servants had heard.
found that no arm could possibly reach such a
Of course it was a crazy thought; for
distance.
there was the fact of the door being locked on
The only theory that remained was that
the inside (and the key being found in Mr.
Mr. Orford had been murdered in some other
Orford’s pocket), and the maids had also
part of the room and afterward dragged to his
heard their master calling after his visitor as present position.
he shut himself in. Still, it was a thought that But this seemed more than unlikely, as
further distracted the tortured mind of the girl.
it would have meant moving the desk, a heavy
The whole thing seized her with a
piece of furniture that did not look as if it had terrible sense of nightmare horror, and on the
been touched, and also because there was a
second day after the murder she was in a state
paper under the dead man’s hand, a pen in his
so desperate that her father feared for her
fingers, a splutter of ink where it had fallen, reason.
and a sentence unfinished.
Nothing would content her but a visit
The thing remained a complete and
to Mr. Orford’s cabinet. She was resolved, she
horrid mystery, one that seized the said wildly, to come to the bottom of this imagination of men. The thing was the talk of
mystery; and in that room, which she had only
all the coffee-houses and clubs.
entered once, and which had affected her so
The murder seemed absolutely terribly, she believed she might find some motiveless; the dead man was not known to
clue.
have an enemy in the world, yet robbery was
The doctor thought it best to allow her
out of the question, for nothing had been even
to go. He and her cousin escorted her to the
touched.
house, that now no one passed without a
The early tragedy was opened out. shudder, and into the chamber that all dreaded Mrs. Boyd told all she knew, which was just
to enter.
All-Story Weekly
12
Good Mrs. Boyd was sobbing behind
scholar being carried away. and his chair
them. The poor soul was quite dazed by this
stood back. The long panel on which hung the
sudden and ghastly ending to her orderly life.
picture of the gallows was fully exposed to
She spoke all incoherently, explaining, view.
excusing and lamenting, all in a breath; yet
To Elisa’s agitated imagination this
through all her trouble she showed plainly and
portion of the wall, sunk in the surrounding
artlessly that she had had no affection for her book-shelves, long and narrow, looked like
master, and that it was custom and habit that
the lid of a coffin.
had been wounded, not love...
“It is time that picture came down,”
Indeed, it seemed that there was no
she said; “it cannot interest any one any
one who did love Humphrey Orford. The longer.”
lawyers were already busy looking for a next
“Lizzie, dear,” suggested her father
of kin: it seemed likely that this property and gently, “had you not better come away? This
the estates in Suffolk would go into Chancery.
is a sad and awful place.”
“You should not go in, my dear, you
“No,” replied she. “I must find out
should not go in,” sobbed the old woman,
about it; we must know.”
catching at Miss Minden’s black gown (she
And she turned about and stared at the
was in mourning for the murdered man), and
portrait of Flora Orford.
yet peering curiously into the cabinet.
A silence fell on the little party; each
Elisa looked ill and distraught, but also
was thinking of this grim mystery that there
resolute.
seemed little chance of solving, the mystery of
“Tell me, Mrs. Boyd,” said she, the murdered man in the locked room—an pausing on the threshold, “what became of the
absolute purposeless murder, as far as any one
scoured silk?”
could see.
The startled housekeeper protested that
1It was Elisa Minden who broke the silence.
she had never seen it again. Here was another
“He hated her, Mrs. Boyd, did he not?
touch of mystery, the old peach-colored silk
And she must have died of fear; think of
skirt that four persons had observed in Mr.
that—died of fear, thinking all the while of
Orford’s cabinet the night of his murder had
that poor body on the gallows. He was a
completely disappeared.
wicked man, and whoever killed him must
“He must have burned it,” said Captain
have done it to revenge Flora Orford.”
Hoare, and though it seemed unlikely that he
“My dear,” said the doctor hastily, “all
could have consumed so many yards of stuff
that was twenty years ago, and the man was
without leaving traces in the grate, Still it was quite justified in what he did, though I cannot the only possible solution.
say I should have been so pleased with the
“I cannot think why he kept it so match if I had known this story.”
long,” murmured Mrs. Boyd. “for it could
“How did we ever like him?” muttered
have been no other than Mrs. Orford’s best
Elisa Minden. “If I had entered this room
gown.”
before, I should never have been promised to
“A ghastly relic,” remarked the young
him. Something terrible is in this room.”
soldier grimly.
“And what else can you look for, my
Elisa Minden went into the middle of
dear,” sniveled Mrs. Boyd, “in a room where a
the room and stared about her. Nothing
in the
man has been murdered?”
place was changed, nothing disordered. The
“But it was like this before,” replied
desk had been moved round to allow of the
Miss Minden; “it frightened me.”
Crimes of Old London: The Scoured Silk 13
She looked round at her father and
window a few inches square, which looked on
cousin and her face was quite distorted.
the garden, was furnished with a filthy bed of
“There is something here now,” she
rags and a stool with a few tattered clothes. A said—“something in this room.”
basket of broken bits was on the floor.
They hastened toward her, thinking
Elisa Minden crept closer.
that her overstrained nerves had given way;
“It is Flora Orford.” she said, speaking
but she took a step forward.
like one in a dream.
Shriek after shriek left her lips.
They brought the poor body down into
With a quivering finger she pointed
the room, and then it was clear that this faded before her at the long panel behind the desk.
and terrible creature had a likeness to the
At first they could not tell at what she
pictured girl who smiled from the canvas over
pointed, then Captain Hoare saw the cause of
the mantelpiece.
her desperate terror.
And another thing was clear, and for a
It was a small portion of faded peach-
moment they refrained from talking.
colored silk, showing above the ribbed line of
For twenty years this woman had
Crimes of Old London: The Scoured Silk by Marjorie Bowen Page 3
