the wainscot, protruding from the wall like a
endured her punishment in the wall chamber
fragment of stuff shut in a door.
in the library that no one but her husband
“She is in there!” cried Miss Minden;
entered; for twenty years he had kept her
“in there!”
there, behind the picture of her lover, feeding A certain frenzy fell on all of them;
her on scraps, letting her out only when the
they were in a confusion, hardly knowing
household was abed, amusing himself with her
what they said or did.
torture—she mending the scoured Silk she had
Only Captain Hoare kept some worn for twenty years, sitting there, cramped presence of mind, and, going up to the panel,
in the almost complete dark, a few feet from
discerned a, fine crack all round.
where he wrote his elegant poetry.
“I believe it is a door.” he said, “and
“Of course she was crazy,” said
that explains how the murderer must have
Captain Hoare at length, “but why did she
struck—from the wall.”
never cry out?”
He lifted up the picture of the hanged
“For a good reason.” whispered Dr.
man and found a small knob or button, which,
Minden, when he had signaled to Mrs. Boyd
as he expected, on being pressed sent the
to take his fainting daughter away; “he saw to
panel back into the wall, disclosing a secret
that— she has got no tongue. ”
chamber no larger than a cupboard.
And directly inside this hidden room,
The coffin bearing the name-plate
that was dark to the sight and noisome to the
“Flora Orford” was exhumed and found to nostrils, was the body of a woman, leaning
contain only lead; it was substituted by
against the inner wall, with a white kerchief
another containing the wasted body of the
knotted tightly round her throat, showing how
woman who died by her own hand twenty
she had died. She wore the scoured silk skirt,
years after the date on the mural tablet to her the end of which had been shut in the panel,
memory.
and an old ragged bodice of linen that was like Why or how this creature, certainly
dirty parchment; her hair was gray and scanty,
became idiotic and dominated entirely by the
her face past any likeness to humanity, her
man who kept her prisoner, had suddenly
body thin and dry.
found the resolution and skill to slay her tyrant The room, which was lit only by a
and afterward take her own life (a thing she
All-Story Weekly
14
might have done any time before, was a as she handled the scoured silk, which the question never solved.
captive was allowed to creep out and mend
It was supposed that he had formed the
when the library door was locked. But over
hideous scheme to complete his revenge by
these matters and the details of her twenty
leaving her in the wall to die of starvation
years’ suffering it is but decent to be silent.
while he left with his new bride for abroad,
Lizzie Minden married her cousin, but
and that she knew this and had forestalled
not at St. Paul’s, Covent Garden.
him, or else that her poor, lunatic brain had
Nor did they ever return to the
been roused by the sound of a woman’s voice
neighborhood of Humphrey Orford’s house.
Crimes of Old London: The Scoured Silk by Marjorie Bowen Page 4