“I am ready, Sir John,” said I.
“Have you found anything of interest?”
“A few things, perhaps — one of almost certain significance.”
“Let us, then, be gone from here.”
Outside her door, a downward glance told me that Mrs. Paltrow’s body had been removed. To what place I knew not, yet it seemed to me that anywhere would be better than that patch of floor she had occupied at the bottom of the stairway.
As we two descended in tandem, Sir John remarked to me that he wished to revisit Mrs. Eakins.
The name was familiar, but. . “And who is she, sir?”
From him came a deep sigh of disappointment. “The shortness of your memory does sometimes astound me, Jeremy. You should attempt exercises to increase and lengthen it. However” — again that dreadful sigh — “to answer your question, Mrs. Eakins is the woman who dwells on the ground floor. It was she who directed us to the Widow Paltrow yesterday afternoon.”
“Ah, so she was!”
“Indeed, she was.”
No word more was spoken until we stood before her door, at which time he said in a manner rather severe: “I have noted that you have taken to knocking in a timorous, tentative style. A good knock should be done with strength and authority. Let me demonstrate.”
And so saying, he measured the distance to the door, then gave four or five solid thwacks to it with his doubled fist.
Indeed, I was impressed, and so, reader, was Mrs. Eakins. We heard footsteps, and then through the door, her voice: “Who is it pounding on my door so rude? There’s constables about. I’ll stick my head out the window and holler one here, I shall. Now, away with you! “
“Madam, I assure you I meant no harm with my knock upon your door. I have but a few questions for you regarding the death of the Widow Paltrow.”
She made no move to open the door. “And who are you?”
“Sir John Fielding, Magistrate of the Bow Street Court in London. You gave me directions to your tenant yesterday afternoon.”
Then at last we were relieved to hear a bolt slip and a key turn. Slowly — and one might even say suspiciously — the door came open, and the gray-haired woman peered out at us.
“Now I remembers you, “ said she, “the blind man. Why didn’t you say so.”
Her question seemed to confound Sir John quite properly. He sputtered, then made what I thought was an odd declaration. “Because. . because, madam, I do not particularly think of myself as a blind man. I am simply who I am.”
“Hmmm,” said she, unwilling, at least for the moment, to examine the implications of what he had just said. “Well, what do you wish to know? “
“I fear that what I have to ask you were asked earlier by Mr. Bester or Dr. Diggs.”
“Who are they? “
“Why, they are, respectively, the Magistrate and Coroner of Bath. “
“That’s as may be, but none came to ask me a question, save a constable name of Merryman I knew from before.”
“And what did he ask you?”
“He asked who lived up above besides old Mrs. Paltrow. I told him what I’d tell you, that as of this week none lived there but her. We had some flooding, chased everyone out but her. I don’t know why those two had to leave. ’Twas me got the worst of it. All they had to do was get their feet wet before they climbed up the stairs. I had to -
“I regret that, madam. I do, truly. But that is not the question I wished to ask you. I wish to know when it was you heard poor Mrs. Paltrow fall down. Could you give an estimate as to the time of the day or evening?”
She looked at Sir John oddly. “I never did hear her.”
“You mean you heard no fall, no tumble, no cry for help?”
“Course I never heard her. You think I wouldn’t have run out to help? Peg and I, we go back a ways. She wasn’t just a tenant. She was my friend.”
“Then I am sorry for your loss,” said Sir John. “But surely you must have slept through it all. Such a fall would have caused a great deal of noise.”
“And more, sir,” said she, “my bedroom is below the stairs. If she had fallen so, I would have heard. Of that I’m sure, for I’m a terrible light sleeper.”
For a moment or two, Sir John appeared utterly baffled. He rubbed his chin and shook his head, then did he turn to her at last and asked: “How many visitors had she after we left yesterday? “
“Well, now, I’m not sure. Let me think about that,” said she. And that she proceeded to do. “One thing I want you to understand, though. I am not the sort of landlady who spies on her tenants.”
“Oh, certainly not! That is understood — perfectly understood.”
“Well, all right, then-just so you know. First of all, there was you and this lad here. You know better than I when you came by, but as I remembers, it was sometime after four but well before six, because it was right after six, though maybe half past, that those two came by. “
“What two? Madam, you credit us for knowing more than we do.”
“Oh. Well, I suppose I do. But the two I meant was her son and that other one he travels with, the wild-looking older fellow with the beard, the one I don’t like. Now you must know something more about me.”
“And what is that?” He seemed to be wearying of this woman, but had not (as yet) grown cross with her.
“Just as I do not go peeking at my tenants’ visitors through the curtains, I do not go about listening at their doors to learn their private affairs. Nevertheless, I did hear a deal of shouting and foot stomping whilst those two were here. Yet Peg held her own with them. She was shouting right back. Oh, I was proud of her.”
“Did you happen to hear what was said?”
“No, like I said, I’m not the sort to listen.”
“Naturally not, but — “
“Well, I will say there was one word come up often at one time,” she said, interrupting, “and that word was ‘affidavit.’ I’m not even sure myself what it means, though I’ve heard it said a time or two. But then, after the shouting stopped, the two of them left.”
She stopped then, folded her arms, and nodded her head, as if to say, “There, you have it.” Sir John, assuming he had gotten from Mrs. Eakins all she had to give, seemed ready to end their interview. He shuffled his feet. He juggled his hat in his hand. He opened his mouth to speak. Yet before ever a word came out, she had resumed:
“Then one of them came back,” said she.
“What’s that you say?” Sir John asked, obviously taken off guard.
“One of them came back.”
“Well, which of them was it?”
“I couldn’t say. The fact of it is, I can’t even be sure it was one of them two. I just assumed that it was. His step on the stair was heavy, and so it was with both of them. She seemed to know whoever it was, for she opened the door to him.”
“When was this?”
“Ah, well, that’s difficult to say. It was after dark — of that I’m sure. The two of them left just as night was coming on. It couldn’t have been much more than a quarter of an hour after that one of them came back — half-hour at most. It gets dark this time of year round seven, so you can figure it for yourself.
“And when did her visitor leave?”
“That I couldn’t even guess, for I never heard him depart.”
“Never heard him leave, you say? And in the ordinary course of things you would have done so?”
“Oh, yes, I suppose I would, for as I said, my bedroom’s beneath the stairs.” Then did she add, as if it had just occurred to her, “But do you know, I woke up during the night, and I don’t know why. Could it have been Mr. Whoever taking his leave?”