“That’s the inquest I’m going to,” faltered Mrs. Bunting. She could scarcely get the words out. She realised with acute discomfort, yes, and shame, how strange, how untoward, was that which she was going to do. Fancy a respectable woman wanting to attend a murder inquest!
During the last few days all her perceptions had become sharpened by suspense and fear. She realised now, as she looked into the stolid face of her unknown friend, how she herself would have regarded any woman who wanted to attend such an inquiry from a simple, morbid feeling of curiosity. And yet—and yet that was just what she was about to do herself.
“I’ve got a reason for wanting to go there,” she murmured. It was a comfort to unburden herself this little way even to a stranger.
“Ah!” he said reflectively. “A—a relative connected with one of the two victims’ husbands, I presume?”
And Mrs. Bunting bent her head.
“Going to give evidence?” he asked casually, and then he turned and looked at Mrs. Bunting with far more attention than he had yet done.
“Oh, no!” There was a world of horror, of fear in the speaker’s voice.
And the inspector felt concerned and sorry. “Hadn’t seen her for quite a long time, I suppose?”
“Never had seen her. I’m from the country.” Something impelled Mrs. Bunting to say these words. But she hastily corrected herself, “At least, I was.”
“Will he be there?”
She looked at him dumbly; not in the least knowing to whom he was alluding.
“I mean the husband,” went on the inspector hastily. “I felt sorry for the last poor chap—I mean the husband of the last one—he seemed so awfully miserable. You see, she’d been a good wife and a good mother till she took to the drink.”
“It always is so,” breathed out Mrs. Bunting.
“Aye.” He waited a moment. “D’you know anyone about the court?” he asked.
She shook her head.
“Well, don’t you worry. I’ll take you in along o’ me. You’d never get in by yourself.”
They got out; and oh, the comfort of being in some one’s charge, of having a determined man in uniform to look after one! And yet even now there was to Mrs. Bunting something dream-like, unsubstantial about the whole business.
“If he knew—if he only knew what I know!” she kept saying over and over again to herself as she walked lightly by the big, burly form of the police inspector.
“ ’Tisn’t far—not three minutes,” he said suddenly. “Am I walking too quick for you, ma’am?”
“No, not at all. I’m a quick walker.”
And then suddenly they turned a corner and came on a mass of people, a densely packed crowd of men and women, staring at a mean-looking little door sunk into a high wall.
“Better take my arm,” the inspector suggested. “Make way there! Make way!” he cried authoritatively; and he swept her through the serried ranks which parted at the sound of his voice, at the sight of his uniform.
“Lucky you met me,” he said, smiling. “You’d never have got through alone. And ’tain’t a nice crowd, not by any manner of means.”
The small door opened just a little way, and they found themselves on a narrow stone-flagged path, leading into a square yard. A few men were out there, smoking.
Before preceding her into the building which rose at the back of the yard, Mrs. Bunting’s kind new friend took out his watch. “There’s another twenty minutes before they’ll begin,” he said. “There’s the mortuary”—he pointed with his thumb to a low room built out to the right of the court. “Would you like to go in and see them?” he whispered.
“Oh, no!” she cried, in a tone of extreme horror. And he looked down at her with sympathy, and with increased respect. She was a nice, respectable woman, she was. She had not come here imbued with any morbid, horrible curiosity, but because she thought it her duty to do so. He suspected her of being sister-in-law to one of The Avenger’s victims.
They walked through into a big room or hall, now full of men talking in subdued yet eager, animated tones.
“I think you’d better sit down here,” he said considerately, and, leading her to one of the benches that stood out from the whitewashed walls—“unless you’d rather be with the witnesses, that is.”
But again she said, “Oh, no!” And then, with an effort, “Oughtn’t I to go into the court now, if it’s likely to be so full?”
“Don’t you worry,” he said kindly. “I’ll see you get a proper place. I must leave you now for a minute, but I’ll come back in good time and look after you.”
She raised the thick veil she had pulled down over her face while they were going through that sinister, wolfish-looking crowd outside, and looked about her.
Many of the gentlemen—they mostly wore tall hats and good overcoats—standing round and about her looked vaguely familiar. She picked out one at once. He was a famous journalist, whose shrewd, animated face was familiar to her owing to the fact that it was widely advertised in connection with a preparation for the hair—a preparation which in happier, more prosperous days Bunting had had great faith in, and used, or so he always said, with great benefit to himself. This gentleman was the centre of an eager circle; half a dozen men were talking to him, listening deferentially when he spoke, and each of these men, so Mrs. Bunting realised, was a Somebody.
How strange, how amazing, to reflect that from all parts of London, from their doubtless important avocations, one unseen, mysterious beckoner had brought all these men here together, to this sordid place, on this bitterly cold, dreary day. Here they were, all thinking of, talking of, evoking one unknown, mysterious personality—that of the shadowy and yet terribly real human being who chose to call himself The Avenger. And somewhere, not so very far away from them all, The Avenger was keeping these clever, astute, highly trained minds—aye, and bodies, too—at bay.
Even Mrs. Bunting, sitting here unnoticed, realised the irony of her presence among them.
CHAPTER XIX
It seemed to Mrs. Bunting that she had been sitting there a long time—it was really about a quarter of an hour—when her official friend came back.
“Better come along now,” he whispered; “it’ll begin soon.”
She followed him out into a passage, up a row of steep stone steps, and so into the Coroner’s Court.
The court was a big, well-lighted room, in some ways not unlike a chapel, the more so that a kind of gallery ran half-way round, a gallery evidently set aside for the general public, for it was now crammed to its utmost capacity.
Mrs. Bunting glanced timidly towards the serried row of faces. Had it not been for her good fortune in meeting the man she was now following, it was there that she would have had to try and make her way. And she would have failed. Those people had rushed in the moment the doors were opened, pushing, fighting their way in a way she could never have pushed or fought.
There were just a few women among them, set, determined-looking women, belonging to every class, but made one by their love of sensation and their power of forcing their way in where they wanted to be. But the women were few; the great majority of those standing there were men—men who were also representative of every class of Londoner.
The centre of the court was like an arena; it was sunk two or three steps below the surrounding gallery. Just now it was comparatively clear of people, save for the benches on which sat the men who were to compose the jury. Some way from these men, huddled together in a kind of big pew, stood seven people—three women and four men.
“D’you see the witnesses?” whispered the inspector, pointing these out to her. He supposed her to know one of them with familiar knowledge, but, if that were so, she made no sign.
Between the windows, facing the whole room, was a kind of little platform, on which stood a desk and an arm-chair. Mrs. Bunting guessed rightly that it was there the coroner would sit. And to the left of the platform was the witness-stand, also raised considerably above the jury.
Amazingly different, and far, far more grim and awe-inspiring than the scene of the inquest which had taken place so long ago, on that bright April day, in the village inn. There the coroner had sat on the same level as the jury, and the witnesses had simply stepped forward one by one, and taken their place before him.
Looking round her fearfully, Mrs. Bunting thought she would surely die if ever she were exposed to the ordeal of standing in that curious box-like stand, and she stared across at the bench where sat the seven witnesses with a feeling of sincere pity in her heart.
But even she soon realised that her pity was wasted. Each woman witness looked eager, excited, and animated; well pleased to be the centre of attention and attraction to the general public. It was plain each was enjoying her part of important, if humble, actress in the thrilling drama which was now absorbing the attention of all London—it might almost be said of the whole world.
Looking at these women, Mrs. Bunting wondered vaguely which was which. Was it that rather draggle-tailed-looking young person who had certainly, or almost certainly, seen The Avenger within ten seconds of the double crime being committed? The woman who, aroused by one of his victims’ cry of terror, had rushed to her window and seen the murderer’s shadowy form pass swiftly by in the fog?
Yet another woman, so Mrs. Bunting now remembered, had given a most circumstantial account of what The Avenger looked like, for he, it was supposed, had actually brushed by her as he passed.
Those two women now before her had been interrogated and cross-examined again and again, not only by the police, but by representatives of every newspaper in London. It was from what they had both said—unluckily their accounts materially differed—that that official description of The Avenger had been worked up—that which described him as being a good-looking, respectable young fellow of twenty-eight, carrying a newspaper parcel….
As for the third woman, she was doubtless an acquaintance, a boon companion of the dead.
Mrs. Bunting looked away from the witnesses, and focused her gaze on another unfamiliar sight. Specially prominent, running indeed through the whole length of the shut-in space, that is, from the coroner’s high dais right across to the opening in the wooden barrier, was an ink-splashed table at which, when she had first taken her place, there had been sitting three men busily sketching; but now every seat at the table was occupied by tired, intelligent-looking men, each with a notebook, or with some loose sheets of paper, before him.
“Them’s the reporters,” whispered her friend. “They don’t like coming till the last minute, for they has to be the last to go. At an ordinary inquest there are only two—maybe three—attending, but now every paper in the kingdom has pretty well applied for a pass to that reporters’ table.”
He looked consideringly down into the well of the court. “Now let me see what I can do for you——”
Then he beckoned to the coroner’s officer: “Perhaps you could put this lady just over there, in a corner by herself? Related to a relation of the deceased, but doesn’t want to be——” He whispered a word or two, and the other nodded sympathetically, and looked at Mrs. Bunting with interest. “I’ll put her just here,” he muttered. “There’s no one coming there to-day. You see, there are only seven witnesses—sometimes we have a lot more than that.”
And he kindly put her on a now empty bench opposite to where the seven witnesses stood and sat with their eager, set faces, ready—aye, more than ready—to play their part.
For a moment every eye in the court was focused on Mrs. Bunting, but soon those who had stared so hungrily, so intently, at her, realised that she had nothing to do with the case. She was evidently there as a spectator, and, more fortunate than most, she had a “friend at court,” and so was able to sit comfortably, instead of having to stand in the crowd.
But she was not long left in isolation. Very soon some of the important-looking gentlemen she had seen downstairs came into the court, and were ushered over to her seat, while two or three among them, including the famous writer whose face was so familiar that it almost seemed to Mrs. Bunting like that of a kindly acquaintance, were accommodated at the reporters’ table.
“Gentlemen, the Coroner.”
The jury stood up, shuffling their feet, and then sat down again; over the spectators there fell a sudden silence.
And then what immediately followed recalled to Mrs. Bunting, for the first time, that informal little country inquest of long ago.
First came the “Oyez! Oyez!” the old Norman-French summons to all whose business it is to attend a solemn inquiry into the death—sudden, unexplained, terrible—of a fellow-being.
The jury—there were fourteen of them—all stood up again. They raised their hands and solemnly chanted together the curious words of their oath.
Then came a quick, informal exchange of sentences ’twixt the coroner and his officer.
Yes, everything was in order. The jury had viewed the bodies—he quickly corrected himself—the body, for, technically speaking, the inquest just about to be held only concerned one body.
And then, amid a silence so absolute that the slightest rustle could be heard through the court, the coroner—a clever-looking gentleman, though not so old as Mrs. Bunting thought he ought to have been to occupy so important a position on so important a day—gave a little history, as it were, of the terrible and mysterious Avenger crimes.
He spoke very clearly, warming to his work as he went on.
He told them that he had been present at the inquest held on one of The Avenger’s former victims. “I only went through professional curiosity,” he threw in by way of parenthesis, “little thinking, gentlemen, that the inquest on one of these unhappy creatures would ever be held in my court.”
On and on he went, though he had, in truth, but little to say, and though that little was known to every one of his listeners.
Mrs. Bunting heard one of the older gentlemen sitting near her whisper to another: “Drawing it out all he can; that’s what he’s doing. Having the time of his life, evidently!” And then the other whispered back, so low that she could only just catch the words, “Aye, aye. But he’s a good chap—I knew his father; we were at school together. Takes his job very seriously, you know—he does to-day, at any rate.”
—
She was listening intently, waiting for a word, a sentence, which would relieve her hidden terrors, or, on the other hand, confirm them. But the word, the sentence, was never uttered.
And yet, at the very end of his long peroration, the coroner did throw out a hint which might mean anything—or nothing.
“I am glad to say that we hope to obtain such evidence to-day as will in time lead to the apprehension of the miscreant who has committed, and is still committing, these terrible crimes.”
Mrs. Bunting stared uneasily up into the coroner’s firm, determined-looking face. What did he mean by that? Was there any new evidence—evidence of which Joe Chandler, for instance, was ignorant? And, as if in answer to the unspoken question, her heart gave a sudden leap, for a big, burly man had taken his place in the witness-box—a policeman who had not been sitting with the other witnesses.
But soon her uneasy terror became stilled. This witness was simply the constable who had found the first body. In quick, business-like tones he described exactly what had happened to him on that cold, foggy morning ten days ago. He was shown a plan, and he marked it slowly, carefully, with a thick finger. That was the exact place—no, he was making a mistake—that was the place where the other body had lain. He explained apologetically that he had got rather mixed up between the two bodies—that of Johanna Cobbett and Sophy Hurtle.
And then the coroner intervened authoritatively: “For the purpose of this inquiry,” he said, “we must, I think, for a moment, consider the two murders together.”
After that, the witness went on far more comfortably; and as he proceeded, in a quick monotone, the full and deadly horror of The Avenger’s acts came over Mrs. Bunting i
n a great seething flood of sick fear and—and, yes, remorse.
Up to now she had given very little thought—if, indeed, any thought—to the drink-sodden victims of The Avenger. It was he who had filled her thoughts,—he and those who were trying to track him down. But now? Now she felt sick and sorry she had come here to-day. She wondered if she would ever be able to get the vision the policeman’s words had conjured up out of her mind—out of her memory.
And then there came an eager stir of excitement and of attention throughout the whole court, for the policeman had stepped down out of the witness-box, and one of the women witnesses was being conducted to his place.
Mrs. Bunting looked with interest and sympathy at the woman, remembering how she herself had trembled with fear, trembled as that poor, bedraggled, common-looking person was trembling now. The woman had looked so cheerful, so—so well pleased with herself till a minute ago, but now she had become very pale, and she looked round her as a hunted animal might have done.
But the coroner was very kind, very soothing and gentle in his manner, just as that other coroner had been when dealing with Ellen Green at the inquest on that poor drowned girl.
After the witness had repeated in a toneless voice the solemn words of the oath, she began to be taken, step by step, through her story. At once Mrs. Bunting realised that this was the woman who claimed to have seen The Avenger from her bedroom window. Gaining confidence as she went on, the witness described how she had heard a long-drawn, stifled screech, and, aroused from deep sleep, had instinctively jumped out of bed and rushed to her window.
The coroner looked down at something lying on his desk. “Let me see! Here is the plan. Yes—I think I understand that the house in which you are lodging exactly faces the alley where the two crimes were committed?”
And there arose a quick, futile discussion. The house did not face the alley, but the window of the witness’s bedroom faced the alley.
The Big Book of Jack the Ripper Page 81