Beyond These Voices by M. E. Braddon

Author:M. E. Braddon [Braddon, M. E. (Mary Elizabeth)]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: anboco
Published: 2017-02-26T23:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER XV

Lord Okehampton, discussing the financier's fate in a tête-à-tête dinner with his wife, was only one among a multitude who were thinking of the Provana murder. There is nothing that English men and women enjoy more than the crime which they call "a really good murder." They will import sensation cases from America or the colonies, and will try to feel as keenly interested in a murder in New York or Melbourne as in a London tragedy. But the keen relish is lacking where the crime has been done afar off. It is impossible to realise the scene in unfamiliar surroundings. The sense of nearness, of the street or the countryside we know, is a strong factor in the interest of the story. To the man who knows his Paris thoroughly a Parisian crime may appeal; but to the woman who buys frocks in the Rue de la Paix, and hats on the Boulevard des Italiens, the most diabolical murder in the Marais, or on the heights of Belleville, seems tame.

Thus the murder of a millionaire in the midst of the rich man's London was a crime that set every sensation-seeker theorising and arguing. Every man is at heart a Sherlock Holmes, while every woman thinks herself a criminal investigator by instinct; and the theories worked out and expounded over tea-tables, and maintained with a red-hot intensity, were various and startling. The most sanguinary murder is a poor thing if people know how and by whom it was done. Mystery is essential in a crime that is to occupy the mind of the public. The murder in the great house in Portland Place had all the elements of enduring success—wealth, beauty, secrecy, and that Italian flavour which offered poignant possibilities of jealousy or revenge, or perhaps a life-long vendetta, as the motive of the crime.

The inquiry in the coroner's court dragged slowly towards an indeterminate and unsatisfactory close, being adjourned at long intervals to give the police time to make discoveries.

So far the police had made no discoveries, and the daily Press was beginning to be angry with the Criminal Investigation Department; and to make uncivil comparisons between the home article and the same thing in France and Germany. In the meantime the newspapers found subject for occasional paragraphs, though they had no new facts to communicate. So long as the inquest went on, picturesque reporters found a spacious field for their pen in the descriptions of witnesses and spectators in the coroner's court; the spectators being mostly women of some fashion, and more or less famous in the world of art and letters. The stage, also, had been represented among that morbidly curious crowd; popular actresses coming to study the appearance and demeanour of the young widow, whose marble calm in the witness box had been written and talked about. But in spite of searching and patient inquiry, the murder in Portland Place remained an insoluble mystery, a standing reproach against Scotland Yard.

While the man in the street

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