Crimes of Old London: The Scoured Silk by Marjorie Bowen

by Monte Herridge

  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

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  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.