CHAPTER XXXVIII.—‘ONE MORE UNFORTUNATE’

On arriving at the inquiry office, Sutherland was at once shown in to the chief of the establishment, who looked truly concerned and anxious.

‘Glad you’ve come, sir,’ he said at once; ‘for perhaps you can help me out of my quandary. You got my little note? Well, the fact is, I think—I’m almost sure, in fact—that we’ve discovered the lady.’

‘So you wrote; but how? Where? 9 ‘Well, it’s a sad case!’ murmured the chief with a shake of the head. ‘How we’re to break it to the husband, who is half mad with grief and anxiety, is a puzzler. My great fear is that the news may get to him before we’ve time to break it.’

‘Explain!’ cried Sutherland impatiently.

The chief opened his desk, and took out a large handbill, which he unfolded.

‘Just look at this, sir,’ he said, while the young man read it with a shudder. ‘This is only a copy of the bill which the police will have all over London to-morrow, and perhaps in some of the papers. I’ve already been down to Chelsea to make an inspection, and I don’t think there’s any mistake about it. What makes it quite clear is the bracelets. Her Christian name—Madeline—is graven inside.—But you’re not well, sir. I don’t wonder it has turned you sick. Shall I give you a drop of brandy? I have it handy.’

Sutherland, who had turned faint and deadly pale, recovered himself with an effort.

‘Never mind me. Think of him, her husband. You say you haven’t communicated with him?’

‘No, sir. It was only found early this morning, and the moment I heard of the discovery I sent straight to you.’ ‘But the police——’

‘I’ve squared that. They won’t send to him to-night without communicating with me.’

‘The shock will be frightful—enough to kill him.’

‘No doubt of that, but there’s no help for it—he must know.’

‘The first thing to do is to make certain of the identity. The description may be misleading. I suppose I can see her?’

‘Yes, sir, returned the chief with alacrity. ‘If you like I’ll go down with you at once.’

A few minutes later Sutherland and the inquiry officer were rattling down towards Putney in a hansom cab. It was a dark and dismal afternoon in autumn, and as they rapidly passed the gates of Hyde Park the leafless trees looked desolate through a thin mist of rain. To the eye of Edgar Sutherland everything was sombre and dreadful, dark with tragic shadows of sin and death.

They drove through Knightsbridge to Hammersmith, then crossing Hammersmith Bridge, beneath which the river rolled black and sinister, came into the gloomy purlieus of a desolate waterside suburb. It was now growing dark, and the street lamps, which were few and far between, flashed dismally on cheerless brand-new villas, for the most part untenanted and faced with boards ‘To Let,’ gloomy gardens, dark brickfields, and spaces of damp meadow stretching down to the river side. Here and there a tavern opened its bloodshot eyes, and attracted one or two dreary moths to its dingy gleam.

After passing through a mile or more of this gloomy neighbourhood, the cab turned down a narrow street running at right angles to the river banks, and pulled up before a desolate stone building with the inscription—‘Police Station.’

The officer alighted and led the way into a whitewashed room, lit by a solitary gas jet, and occupied by a policeman in uniform, who stood at a desk writing. Wafered on the wall, close to the desk, was a placard similar to that which Sutherland had already seen, headed in bold capitals—
FOUND DROWNED!

and giving the description of the body of a female found that morning by a waterman in the near neighbourhood of Putney Bridge.

After a few hurried words with the inquiry officer, the police sergeant turned to Sutherland.

‘You wish to identify, sir? I’m afraid you’ll find it a difficult job. As far as I can make out, it’s been a long time in the water.’

Sutherland shuddered as the sergeant, in the most business-like way possible, took down a key from a nail and led the way to the back of the building, across a damp yard, and up to a low wooden door: this he opened leisurely with his key, and revealed a sort of rude mortuary, lit by a gas jet turned so low down as to leave the place almost in darkness. They entered, and when the sergeant had leisurely turned up the gas, saw, stretched out upon a wooden slab, what had once been a living woman.

She lay exactly as she had been found, with clenched hands and shoeless feet, clad in a plain dress of serge, partly torn and eaten away. Round her shoulders were the remains of a valuable shawl, firmly secured by a large common shawl pin. Her head was bare, and the loose, fair hair, tangled and twisted in moist knots, hung around the disfigured lineaments of a skeletonian face. So horrible was this face, so unrecognisable in its lost humanity, that Sutherland almost swooned as he looked upon it. Alas, what likeness of living flesh and blood could he discover there?

‘She must have been drifting up and down for weeks,’ said the sergeant with professional stolidity; ‘and I suppose last night’s high tide brought her up this way, and carried her into the shallows. There isn’t much remaining of the poor creature except clothes, sir; and her own father could scarcely know her. Seems to have been a fine woman, and quite young, though it’s hard to tell even that.’

There’s a ring on her finger,’ cried Sutherland—‘a wedding-ring?’

‘Yes,’ returned the sergeant, ‘and I understand the missing lady was married. But I shouldn’t go too much by that, sir. Most of the unfortunates who make a hole in the water wear wedding-rings. But these bracelets now, there’s no mistaking them. Just look, sir.’

As he spoke, the sergeant took from a slab at the corpse’s side one or two elegant bracelets, greatly tarnished by the water, but of solid gold.

‘We took them off and had them cleaned for identification; they were in a shocking state, sir, and had worked right into the bone.’

Sutherland took the bracelet, and uttered a horrified exclamation, as he deciphered, cut clearly on the solid surface, these words—


To Dear Madeline.

A birthday gift from her sister,

—Margaret Forster.


At that very moment, as Sutherland stood looking at the bracelets and feeling his heart turn sick within him, a figure flitted in through the open door, and, pushing the two other men aside, gazed on the corpse with a face almost as terrible, almost as ghastly, as its own. The inquiry officer recognised James Forster in a moment, and made a movement as if to intercept his view of the dead woman, but in an instant he was on his knees, gazing wildly into the cold disfigured face, and stretching out his arms in horrified entreaty and recognition. ‘Madeline! My darling!’

The wild cry rang out in the desolate place, with a tone of infinite agony and woe.