readily said in answer to questions; had been fond of chaffing with the two girls a bit, but nothing more. Meant nothing by it, nothing serious. Respected both of them; regarded them as perfectly well-conducted young women.—Was either of them his sweetheart? Certainly not. Had not courted either of them. Never thought of either of them as his future wife: should not consider a servant eligible for that position—at least, his mother would not. Of the two, he had liked Jane Cross the best. Did not know anything whatever of the circumstances attending the death; thought it a most deplorable calamity, and was never more shocked in his life than when he heard of it.
“Is there any truth in the report that you were at the house on Monday evening?” asked the coroner.
“There is no truth in it.”
“I see him come out o’ No. 7: I see him come out o’ the side door in the garden wall,” burst forth a boy’s earnest voice from the back of the room.
“You saw me not come out of it,” quietly replied Thomas Owen, turning round to see who it was that had spoken. “Oh, it is you, is it, Bob Jackson! Yes, you came running round the corner just as I turned from the door.”
“You were there, then?” cried the coroner.
“No, sir. At the door, yes; that’s true enough; but I was not inside it. What happened was this: on Monday I had some business at a farmhouse near Munpler, and set out to walk over there early in the evening. In passing down the side road by No. 7, I saw the two maids at the top window. One of them—I think it was Jane Cross—called out to ask me in a joking kind of way whether I was about to pay them a visit; I answered, not then, but I would as I came back if they liked. Accordingly, in returning, I rang the bell. It was not answered, and I rang again with a like result. Upon that, I went straight home to my milk books, and did not stir out again, as my mother can prove. That is the truth, sir, on my oath; and the whole truth.”
“What time was this?”
“I am not quite sure. It was getting dusk.”
“Did you see anything of the young women this second time?”
“Not anything.”
“Or hear anything?—Any noise?”
“None whatever. I supposed that they would not come to the door to me because it was late: I thought nothing else. I declare, sir, that this is all I know of the matter.”
There was a pause when he concluded. Knapp, the policeman, and another one standing by his side, peered at Owen from under their eyebrows, as if they did not put implicit faith in his words: and the coroner recalled Matilda Valentine.
She readily confirmed the statement of his having passed along the side road, and Jane Cross’s joking question to him. But she denied having heard him ring on his return, and said the door-bell had not rung at all that night. Which would seem to prove that Owen must have rung during the time she had gone out for the beer.
So, you perceive, the inquest brought forth no more available light, and had to confess itself baffled.
“A fine termination this is to our pleasure,” cried the Squire, gloomily. “I don’t like mysteries, Johnny. And of all the mysteries I have come across in my life, the greatest mystery is this at No. 7.”
THE MYSTERY AT NUMBER SEVEN
II.—OWEN, THE MILKMAN
It was a grand sea to-day: one of the grandest that we had seen at Saltwater. The waves were dancing and sparkling like silver; the blue of the sky was deeper than a painter’s ultramarine. But to us, looking on it from Mrs. Blair’s house in Seaboard Terrace, its brightness and beauty were dimmed.
“For you see, Johnny,” observed the Squire to me, his face and tone alike gloomy—outward things take their impress from the mind—“with that dreadful affair at the next door jaundicing one’s thoughts, the sea might as well be grey as blue, and the sky lowering with thunder-clouds. I repeat that I don’t like mysteries: they act on me like a fit of indigestion.”
The affair just was a mystery; to us, as to all Saltwater. More than a week had elapsed since the Monday evening when it took place, and poor Jane Cross now lay buried in the windy graveyard. On this said Monday evening, the two servant maids, Jane Cross and Matilda Valentine (left in the house, No. 7, Seaboard Terrace, during the absence of the family abroad), had been pursuing their ordinary occupations. While Jane Cross was laying the cloth for supper in the kitchen, Matilda went out to fetch the usual pint of ale. On her return she could not get in. When admittance was obtained, Jane Cross lay dead in the hall, having fallen down the well of the staircase. Evidences of a scuffle on the upper landing could be traced, making it apparent that the fall was not accidental; that she had been flung down. Some doubt attached to Owen, the milkman, partly from his previous intimacy with the girls, chiefly because he had been seen leaving the back door of the house somewhere about the time it must have occurred. What Owen said was, that he had rung twice at the door, but his ring was not answered.
Matilda was to be pitied. The two young women had cared a good deal for one another, and the shock to Matilda was serious. The girl, now staying in our house, had worn a half-dazed look ever since, and avoided No. 7 as though it had the plague. Superstition in regard to the house had already been rife in both the servants’ minds, in consequence of the unhappy death in it of their master’s son, Edmund Peahern, some weeks back: and if Matilda had been afraid of seeing one ghost before (as she had been) she would now undoubtedly expect to see two of them.
On this same morning, as I stood with the Squire looking at the sea from the drawing-room window of No. 6, Matilda came in. Her large dark eyes had lost their former sparkle, her clear olive skin its freshness. She asked leave to speak to Mrs. Todhetley: and the Mater—who sat at the table adding up some bills, for our sojourn at Saltwater was drawing towards its close—told her, in a kindly tone, to speak on.
“I am making bold to ask you, ma’am, whether you could help me to find a place in London,” began Matilda, standing between the door and the table in her black dress. “I know, ma’am, you don’t live in London, but a long way off it; Mrs. Blair has told me so, Master Johnny Ludlow also: but I thought perhaps you knew people there, and might be able to hear of something.”
The Mater looked at Matilda without answering, and then round at us. Rather strange it was, a coincidence in a small way, that we had had a letter from London from Miss Deveen that morning, which had concluded with these lines of postscript: “Do you chance to know of any nice, capable young woman in want of a situation? One of my housemaids is going to leave.”
Naturally this occurred to the Mater’s mind when Matilda spoke. “What kind of situation do you wish for?” she asked.
“As housemaid, ma’am, or parlour-maid. I can do my duty well in either.”
“But now, my girl,” spoke up the Squire, turning from the window, “why need you leave Saltwater? You’d never like London after it. This is a clear, fresh, health-giving place, with beautiful sands and music on them all day long; London is nothing but smoke and fogs.”
Matilda shook her head. “I could not stay here, sir.”
“Nonsense, girl. Of course what has happened has happened, and it’s very distressing; and you, of all people, must feel it so: but you will forget it in time. If you don’t care to go back to No. 7 before Mr. and Mrs. Peahern come home–”
“I can never go back to No. 7, sir,” she interrupted, a vehemence that seemed born of terror in her subdued voice. “Never in this world. I would rather die.”
“Stuff and nonsense!” said the Squire, impatiently. “There’s nothing the matter with No. 7. What has happened in it won’t happen again.”
“It is an unlucky house, sir; a haunted house,” she contended with suppressed emotion. “And it’s true that I would rather die outright than go back to live in it; for the terror of being there would slowly kill me. And so, ma’am,” she added quickly to Mrs. Todhetley, evidently wishing to escape the subject, “I should like to go away altogether from Saltwater; and if