The Witness on the Roof (2 page)

“Doing? Little need to ask that question, John Spencer—look at Tim out there! You are fair silly over the girl—”

But the hand had relaxed its grip; little Polly waited for no more. Experience had taught her that, though her father might take her part at the time, her stepmother was sure to have her own way in the end. She ran out at the back of the house, past the stables, in which she could hear her father's charges, the great Sir Robert Brunton's carriage horses, stirring impatiently. With a passing feeling of wonder that Jim Gregory, her father's underling, should be away from his post, she climbed up a ladder into the loft where the provender for the horses was kept.

High above, almost hidden by the rough straw, there was a small round window. To get to it, holding by the bundles of straw, was an easy matter to Polly. She caught an echo of her stepmother's voice in the yard as she popped through and, clambering by a water-pipe, made a perilous ascent to the roof of the nearest house. There, concealed by a high stack of chimneys, she presently sat down to review the situation.

Mrs. Spencer was the only mother the child had ever known. John Spencer's first wife had died in 1887, leaving him with two daughters—Evie, then just fifteen, and the week-old baby.

It had been a sorry time for the man. Evie adored the baby, but her ideas of managing it, and the house, had been vague, and there had been no one to blame John Spencer when, a couple of years after his wife's death, he had married the buxom cook in the establishment in which he was coachman—no one, that is to say, but Evie, who had resented her father's second marriage passionately. There had been constant skirmishes between her and her stepmother until, when Polly was five years old, Evie had found the situation intolerable and had suddenly disappeared from home.

Polly—whose memory of her sister was now merely a vague recollection of being cradled in tender arms, of loving kisses being pressed upon her cheeks—sometimes had letters and beautiful presents from Evie. The rest of the family had nothing. Her stepmother, loudly opining that the girl had gone to the bad, confiscated the presents; the letters, written very plainly so that the child might read them, Polly kept and conned over and over again until she knew them by heart. It was nice to feel that some one cared for her, even this dimly-remembered elder sister.

She was thinking of that now as she sat hunched up behind the chimneys. She had had a letter from her sister the day before; perhaps that had helped to make her stepmother so cross, she reflected. Young as she was, she realized perfectly that the fact that Evie had so completely emancipated herself from her thraldom was exceedingly galling to Mrs. Spencer—almost as galling perhaps as that other fact which she had heard her father state in one of his rare fits of anger.

“Leave the child alone!” he had growled. “You don't understand her—how should you? Her mother was a lady born.”

Polly thought of that now as she looked round with the air of a conqueror exploring some unknown world.

Grove Street Mews ran at the back of Hinton Square, where the town house of her father's employer was situated. At the opposite side, nearer where Polly had emerged, was Grove Street, a precinct which had undoubtedly known better days; fallen as it was, it still retained some remnants of past greatness in the shape of lofty rooms and large windows. It had, however, become the prey of the tenement owner, and each house harboured six or eight different tenants.

It was on the roof of one of these Grove Street houses that Polly now found herself. Above her there arose another story and yet another. Polly ran great danger of being seen as she picked her way carefully along. It was very dirty; soot and grime seemed to have found a final resting-place on the ledges. Looking down at her begrimed frock and pinafore, Polly shrugged her thin shoulders with unchild-like resignation. What did it matter? Her stepmother was sure to be angry anyhow.

At first there was fascination enough in the roof itself—in climbing over the various little projections, skirting the chimneys, or watching the sparrows that sat looking at her with their unwinking black eyes, as if marvelling at this sudden invasion of their territory.

But presently Polly grew more enterprising; she looked up at the long rows of windows. What were the people doing behind the blinds and curtains?

Some of the sills were on a level with her head; raising herself on tiptoe she could just manage to see in. The first was a sitting-room; so much she had contrived to make out when there was a sound of an opening door, and with a little gasp of alarm she drew back.

No sound came from the room, however; evidently she had passed unnoticed; and presently, regaining confidence, she crept along.

At length she was stopped by the wall of the next story. Polly looked up at the overhanging eaves wistfully; it was impossible to think of getting up there, and she was about to turn back hopelessly when a window close at hand caught her attention—it was sufficiently low to be easy of access. Polly found herself unable to resist the temptation. Tiptoeing, she gazed through the lower pane. At first, by contrast with the sunshine outside, everything looked dark, but, becoming used to the dimness, the child saw that the room was a great bare-looking apartment. She was too ignorant to know that the big easel in the middle of the room, the stacks of unfinished canvases against the walls, the untidy litter of paints and tubes and rags on the centre table proclaimed it to be a studio, but something in its aspect attracted her.

A tall man was standing with his back to the window; farther on, nearer the fireplace across the black rug, there lay what Polly thought was a heap of white drapery. But Polly scarcely noticed that; she was altogether absorbed in watching the man's movements. There was something odd about the way he was seizing papers, photographs, books, tearing them, through and casting them hurriedly into the bright, open fire that burned on the hearth.

In the recess, nearest the window by which Polly was standing, was a door; as the child, her big brown eyes wide open, marvelled why the man in the room was recklessly destroying all the pretty pictures she thought so fascinating, a slight movement in the recess caught her eye. She glanced round quickly—the door was being opened. Slowly, very cautiously, it was pushed forward an inch or two; then it remained stationary.

The man went on with his work of destruction; there, was something oddly stealthy about his movements, in spite of his evident haste; scarcely a sound reached Polly's ears, though the window above her was open. Yet there was a certain system about the way he went to work; he would open a book, tear out a few leaves and throw them into the fire, then lay the book down on the table, still in the same furtive, noiseless fashion, and dart to the other end of the table.

As he turned, Polly saw his face plainly.

It was dark, with strongly-marked, rugged features, a mass of rather long, curly hair, a short, neat beard. He was strongly built on massive lines, with big, loose limbs and broad shoulders. Long afterwards other details came back to Polly. She remembered that he was wearing a grey suit, that his linen was clean and white; she recalled the bunch of violets in his buttonhole, the flash of the big. red stone on the little finger of his left hand.

Presently he stood for a moment near the easel. Polly could see that he was putting things in his pockets. Was he a thief, she asked herself breathlessly. She had heard her father and stepmother talking of some daring burglaries that had been perpetrated in the neighbourhood. Was it possible that this man, whose whole mode of procedure seemed to her so extraordinary, was a burglar? Would she have to tell the police? Her round eyes grew rounder. But the man by the table had evidently got all he wanted. With a little gesture of repudiation, he pushed from him all the rest of the litter upon the table, then he went farther away from the window, picked up some small object from the floor, and came over to the white heap upon the rug.

The door in the corner moved, opened rather wider. Little Polly's breathing quickened; she stared before her with wide open, dilated eyes, as if fascinated. It was her imagination of course—it was like the ghastly fancies that sometimes, came when she was in bed and the candle was dying down, turning the homely shadows on the walls into things of dread—but it seemed to her, now that she saw things more clearly, there was something terrifying about the aspect of that tangled mass of drapery heaped upon the rug. It was curiously hunched up; at one end a small black object protruded, a stray beam of sunlight caught it, sparkled on something bright.

Polly's little face turned white; she felt frightened! It could not be a buckle on a woman's shoe—it could not be a woman's foot and ankle that were stretched out there, rigid, motionless?

The man was bending down; he was moving the white mass.

Polly, watching, dominated by terror, saw that it was unmistakably a human form that lay there. With the pathetic early experience of the children of the poor, she had looked on the face of death more than once; she needed no words to tell her the reason of that rigid immobility.

With all her heart the child longed to get away; but sheer horror rendered her motionless.

The figure on the floor lay very still, just as the man placed it. Now that he had moved it, Polly could see that there were ugly dark stains on the white, flimsy gown near the shoulder. She could not see the whole face, only the outline of a rounded cheek and a knot of golden hair.

The man lifted one arm, looked at it scrutinizingly, bent it to one particular angle, then put it down carefully and studied the aspect with his head on one side. Polly saw the crimson gleam of his ring against the white of the dead woman's gown. There was something remarkable about the setting: three heavy golden claws seemed to hold the stone.

The man's face was turned to the window now as he stooped over the dead woman, but he did not look up. He was pallid, with an unnatural greenish pallor; even from that distance it was possible to see great beads of perspiration standing on his brow. He paused a moment as if listening for some sound behind. Then he laid the shining object which he had picked up from the polished boards at the other side of the table on the rug close by the girl's hand. Polly knew what that was; she had seen something like it at the shooting booths.

The door near the window moved again; Polly felt a sudden accession of terror. Who was on the other side? Did the man in the room know that some one was there watching him? What would happen when the door, now only slightly ajar, was fully open? She turned away with a frightened sob; in that silent room it had the force of a louder sound. With a quick gesture the man raised his head, his hand sought his pocket; his eyes, wild and haggard, glanced rapidly behind, then met those of the child peering in at the window.

He sprang to his feet; the door at the side moved again; with a cry of terror, Polly fell back on the sooty roof. She heard a sound behind her, and, fearing that the man was coming after her, she ran over the roof back to the hayloft, little sobs escaping from her. She fell rather than dropped into the loft, too terrified to look behind her, and, tumbling into the straw, she crouched down with her head covered, long quivering sobs shaking her body. How long she had lain there she never knew—to her it seemed hours—when there was a noise in the stable below; some one was coming up the ladder to the loft.

Polly sat up and listened, her heart beating fast with terror. She recognized the step in a minute—it was that of Jim Gregory, the groom—and cried out with a deep sigh of relief:

‘‘Oh, Jim, Jim!”

He gazed at her in amazement, his usually florid face paler than its wont.

“Why, what in the world—” he began.

Polly clutched him in an agony; even at that moment a passing wonder as to why he was wearing his best clothes in the daytime struck her.

“I'm frightened, Jim,” she moaned, “so frightened.”

“Frightened!” The man stooped down and gathered her up in his arms. “Who's frightened you, Polly? Them that tries to hurt you will have to reckon with Jim Gregory!”

“She was lying on the floor all white, and he was there, and the door opened—”

The sentence ended in a little gasp, and the child hid her face on Gregory's shoulder.

“I
WON'T
have the child frightened,” said John Spencer obstinately, as he finished lacing his boots. His wife's face was rather redder than usual as she stood opposite, her sleeves rolled up in readiness to begin the week's washing, Tim clinging to her skirts.

“But don't I tell you, John, it's all the talk this morning, and here I've been listening to the child for the past hour, and this is what she's seen—”

Mr. Spencer's face became apoplectic.

“Don't want to know what she's seen! I tell you I won't have the child bothered!”

Mrs. Spencer shrugged her shoulders scornfully.

“If you don't know what she's seen, John Spencer, it strikes me other folk will. Why, the police will be round asking questions! No good you thinking—” She broke off with a little cry.

Her husband had advanced a step or two towards her; his face was very close to hers.

“Let them ask!” he roared. “You will tell them nothing; do you hear that, woman? I'm not going to have the child brought into court and questioned and cross-questioned until the senses are frightened out of her. What is that you say—you don't see why she should be frightened? No, it would be different with you, no doubt, but her mother was a lady born.” His voice dropped a little. “It was not fit for the likes of me to touch her gown; and I haven't took the care of her children I ought. You drove Eve from home with your nasty, nagging tongue, and now it is Polly. But I won't have it, missis—I won't have it, so remember!” He banged his great fist on the table as he spoke and glared into the woman's eyes.