Vintage Detective Stories by David Stuart Davies

Author:David Stuart Davies [Davies, David Stuart]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781907360688
Publisher: CRW Publishing Ltd
Published: 2013-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

Fourteen

FROM THE JOURNAL OF JOHN WALKER

On leaving Lauriston Gardens, we first called at the nearest telegraph office, where Holmes despatched a long telegram. We then continued our journey to Audley Court to interview John Rance, the constable who had discovered the body.

“I doubt if we’ll learn anything from this cove,” Holmes said, as we alighted from the cab. “The intelligence of the average man on the beat is not terribly high.”

Audley Court was not an attractive locality. The narrow passage led us into a quadrangle paved with flags and lined with sordid dwellings. We picked our way among groups of dirty children, and through lines of grey and discoloured linen, until we came to Number 46, the door of which was decorated with a small tarnished slip of brass engraved with the name of Rance. From a small, emaciated-looking woman, whom Iassumed was Rance’s wife, we learned that the constable was still in bed, and we were shown into a cramped and dowdy front parlour while she went off to rouse him.

He appeared presently, looking a little irritable at having been disturbed in his slumbers.

“I made my report at the office,” he said sharply, as though that were the end of the matter.

Holmes took a half-sovereign from his pocket and played with it pensively.

“We thought that we should like to hear it from your own lips,” he said, flipping the coin in the air.

For a moment an avaricious light flamed in the disgruntled constable’s eyes. “I shall be most happy to tell you anything I can,” he said.

“Just let us hear it all in your own way, as it occurred.”

Rance sat on the horsehair sofa, and knitted his brows, as though determined not to omit any detail in his narrative.

“I’ll tell it ye from the beginning,” he said, with enthusiasm.

He was as good as his word; for some five minutes he took us through the course of his evening, from when he came on duty at around ten o’clock. He even rambled on about clearing some roughs away from outside a pawnshop and helping to deal with a fight at The White Hart.

Holmes waited patiently through this irrelevant recital until he reached the part of his narrative we had come to hear: “It had come on to rain just after two, and I thought I’d take a look round and see that all was right down the Brixton Road. It was precious dirty and lonely. Not a soul did I meet all the way down, though a cab or two went past me. I was wet and miserable, gents, and as I was strollin’, between ourselves, I was thinkin’ how uncommon handy a four of gin-hot would be, when suddenly the glint of a light caught my eye in the window of that same house. Now, I knows that those dwellings in Lauriston Gardens are empty, on account of him that owns them won’t have the drains seen to, though the last tenant died of typhoid fever. I was knocked all in a heap, therefore, at seeing a light in the window, and I suspected something was wrong.

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