door with the name Lydia Duncomb in black on
the door-post. No savoury smell of dinner greets
her. She ascends the old dusty ink-splashed
stairs one flight—that is Mr. Knight's door.
Silent, all out for the Sunday; second flight, she
rests; third flight, here is the landing at last, and
welcome enough to her poor old knees. There
is Mr. Grisly's name still over his door—he is
going to leave; and facing it, again, the well-
known name of Mrs. Lydia Duncomb.

It is singular, though, as they cannot all have
gone to church, that Mrs. Duncomb's outer
door is shut—an accident, no doubt. Mrs. Love
knocks with the confidence of a punctual
visitor, true to the dinner-hour. No answer! It
is very silent and lonesome there at the top of
the house, on the cold landing opposite Mr.
Grisly's unoccupied chambers. A cold creeping
of the blood comes over Mrs. Love. Five, ten,
fifteen minutes' more knocking. No answer.
Something must be the matter. Nanny must
be out, and Mrs. Betty ill in bed, too infirm to
come to the door, too weak to call out loud
enough to be heard. Down the three flights
at last trots Mrs. Love, to see if she can find
anybody who has seen any one of the family that
morning. In the court whom should she meet
but Mrs. Oliphant, and she asks her at once.

"No," said Mrs. Oliphant, "I have seen none
of them; you'd better knock louder."

Up again goes Mrs. Love, feeling sure that
they will now be stirring. Still all silent up
the landing-stairs. She knocks again, nervously
fast, till the whole staircase re-echoes, and
from every empty room there seem to come
voices—shadowy faint voices—but no
articulate answer. She waits. No answer. Mrs.
Betty must have died in the night. Mrs.
Duncomb is confined to her bed. Nanny is
gone to tell her sister, and get a woman to lay
out the body. Such is the theory Mrs. Love
spins in a moment, and takes comfort, albeit
somewhat vexed about dinner. Again she
toddles down-stairs and goes to Mrs. Rhymer,
and tells her; then they both return, nervously
anxious, and they try to push the door
open. But it will not open, and still—still—
there is no answer from within. Then Mrs.
Love goes to a lattice window—the window of the
passage looking out into the court—to see if any
one can be got to help. Yes; there at "my Lord
Bishop of Bangor's door" stands the young
charwoman whom she had met at Mrs.
Duncomb's only on Friday night. Mrs. Love calls
her up, and says to her:

"Sarah, prithee go and fetch a smith to
open Mrs. Duncomb's door."

Sarah says she will go with all speed. She
goes, but returns without a smith—can't find
one at home. Mrs. Oliphant comes with her.

Mrs. Love is by this time fevered with fear.
"Oh, Mrs. Oliphant," she says, "I believe
they are all dead, and the smith is not come!
What shall we do?"

Mrs. Oliphant, who is younger than the
other two, replies: "My master Mr. Grisly's
chambers are opposite; they have been vacant
since Tuesday. Mr. Twysden left me the key
of the back room. Now let me see if I cannot get
out of his chamber window into the gutter, and
so into Mrs. Duncomb's apartment."

They beg her to do so. She opens the
empty dusty rooms that have that strange
"uncanny" look that deserted rooms suddenly
opened always have, as if some mysterious
skulking spirit had just left them as they were
entered. Mrs. Oliphant squeezes through the
window and gets out upon the leads; the next
moment they hear a pane of glass break; it is
Mrs. Duncomb's casement; Mrs. Oliphant is
breaking it, in order to get at the handle. A
noise, and she is heard moving the table and
getting in; then, one cry of horror, a long thrilling
shriek, and she flings open the outer door, and
cries:

"Gracious God! Oh, gracious God! They're
all murdered!"

Mrs. Love, Mrs. Rhymer, and Mrs. Oliphant,
pale, frightened, and horror-stricken, and Sarah
Malcolm, are in a moment wringing their
hands and leaning half paralysed with fear over
the beds where the three murdered people lie;
two strangled, the third (poor little Nanny)
wallowing in blood. But the motive? That
is too palpable; there is the black strong
box, the lid broken open, no sealed-up money,
no tankard, nothing left in it but a few
scattered papers. Sarah Malcolm is loud in her
expressions of horror; but yet she is cooler
than the rest, and suggests various ways by
which the murderers could have entered the
room—down the large kitchen chimney, or by
picking the weak lock of Mr. Grisly's chambers.
She particularly draws the old women's attention
to the fact that the spring-lock of the outer door
was shut when they entered, so the wretches
could not have escaped that way. In a few
moments a crowd pours in—young Templars,
porters, watchmen, lawyers, laundresses. They
make way for Mr. Bigg, a surgeon, who has been
sent for by Fairlow, the Temple porter, from the
Rainbow Coffee-house, to see the bodies. In the
passage was Nanny Price, lying in bed, with her
hair loose and straggling over her eyes; her crimson
hands clenched with the intense despair of
the dying pang. She had struggled hard for
her life. In the next room, the dining-room,
in a press-bed, lay Mrs. Betty partially dressed
—for she usually kept her gown on for warmth.
She had been strangled either by an apron-
string or a pack-thread, which had cut very
deep into her neck. There were also the
red marks of knuckles on it. In the bedroom,
across her bed, lay the poor old lady who
had so long anticipated her fate. There was a faint
crease about her neck, but very faint. She was
so old and weak, that the mere pressure of the
murderer's body had, perhaps, killed her. In the
mean time, Fairlow, the porter, had proved by
experiments with a string, that a person outside,
when the door was shut, could close the bolt on
the inside.

It is at this very moment that the two friends,
Kerrel and Gehagan, entering Tanfield-court,