LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume IV, Issue 402, 25 September 1875, Page 3

LITERATURE.

BY A 15 (W.W.)

The Shadow on the Blind.

{From the Melbourne Town and Country.)

[Concluded.)

The room was small, as were all the rooms in the cottage, and almost all of one side of it was taken up by a double bed, hung with white, dimity curtains. The bed itself was covered with white, and upon it lay stiJHy an awful-looking, shrouded woman's corpse. I say awful looking advisedly, for at the very first glance there was something horrible and unusual in the appearance ol the body. You could not have told, except upon a closer examination, whether it was the corpse of a young or old woman, or hardly, indeed, that it was a woman at all, and I must try to describe its accurately, so that you may be in a position to judge of our painful wonder. The bed, as I have already said, was covered with white, and on it was laid out the corpse. The body was dressed in a long white gown that covered feet and all, and was drawn down in tight straight folds from the neck. The hands and arms lay by the sides straightly, but the lingers, which were delicately shaped and slender, were bent rigidly. In the centre of a white pillow lay the head belonging to this unknown body, and it was the fact that the head was perfectly destitute of hair or covering of any sort that rendered the whole appearance so horribly odd. Had it not been for its association with death, the whole thing would have seemed grotesque and ludicrous ; as it was one felt in no danger of laughing. I bent over the body, and saw that the hair had been closely clipped, not only on the head, but the eyebrows and eyelashes had been completely shorn. There was not a bit of drapery from the throat upward, and it woidd scarcely be believed without the evidence of one's own senses how greatly the clipped scalp affected the appearance of that dead face. Of it the features were small and regular, and expressive of a sweet and happy repose,'and the mouth especially eminently beautiful, and I could fancy that hi life the girl—for she was not more than twenty—may have been very lovely. Both my companion and I had closely examined this strange corpse before avc observed a bit of white paper pinned on the breast" of the shroud and bearing some written characters. The writing was m the same bold masculine hand that had ad dressed the sergeant. 1 recognised that at a glance, and the words written there were.

'Alice Lenuan, aged 19." There was a toilet table at the head of the bed, and some things on it, but leaving a closer examination for a later hour, we went into the other parts of the cottage. There was not a living thing in it, or a sign of tenancy. The kitchen fire-place had no appearance of burnt fuel or ashes, but there was a heap of charred stuff at the back, as of papers and clothing.

We made our examination, and I went to report to the sergeant, and the affair was put into the hands of the detective force, and created quite an interest in the news of the day. There was an inquest held on the day following, and by giving you a sketch of the evidence given at it, I shall be taking the most direct way of letting you know all that was ever known of the mysterious affair. The doctor's evidence was to the point. The woman's death was caused by a poisonous dose of laudanum ; the woman had fallen asleep under its influence, and in all probability never wakened again. The house agent stated in examination that he had let Errol Cottage on the day previous to an elderly lady in deep mourning. She simply paid a week's rent in advance, and stated her intention of immediate occupation, without giving the agent any particulars as to her family; and she must have entered after dark for not a soul had seen her going into or leaving the cottage. My evidence as to the shadow I had seen of a young and graceful woman holding a phial between her and light suggested the idea that the young woman, who was now a corpse had poisoned herself, and that it was her shadow I saw; but if that was the case, who had laid her out, and why had she been deserted after death.

Then came the information acquired by the detectives. One of them, a little more original than the rest, had acted upon th. 3 idea of the dead woman's hair having been sold, and made enquiries among the hairdressers ; he was successful. One of that fraternity had purchased a quantity of bright golden hair from an elderly lady in deep mourning, evidently the same woman who had engaged the cottage from the agent. The hair was produced in court, and in the part of a newspaper in which it was wrapped when purchased. A portion of the same newspaper was lying on the table in the front room of Errol Cottage, leaving but little doubt that the hair was indeed that of the dead woman.

And that was in reality every scrap of evidence that could be obtained. The strictest search of the cottage could not discover a clue. Even from the burnt ashes in the kitchen fireplace not a morsel of clothing could be identified, and there was nothing for it but the usual verdict in such cases, ' The deceased died from an overdose of laudanum; whether self-administered or not is unknown.'

It was very unsatisfactory altogether, and especially so to me. I had connected the death in my own mind with the female whose shadow had so interested me, and under no circumstances could I associate the figure of the dead woman with that tall and graceful one I had seen on the blind. The dead girl was low in stature and thin ; and even in life she had evidently never filled the outline of that fine figure that held the phial. When I went on duty at night I found myself sauntering backwards and forwards near Errol Cottage and looking in at the darkened window as if there was the least hope that I might sec again that shadow and rush in to question the reality.

I had perhaps passed a dozen times, and had turned once more to retrace my steps, when I saw, with a feeling of something very like terror, a light in the same window. Evidently the lamp had been lighted for I saw the globe outlined on the blind. Who could it be ? The corpse had been removed, and it was utterly improbable that the cottage had been again let on the eve of such a mysterious occurrance in it. I could think of nothing likely as the reason of that light but a visit from the house agent himself, and overcoming my hesitation at the thought I opened the gate and went to the door.

• I was not astonished to find the handle yield to me as it had done on my previous visit, for I expected to see the agent inside, or perhaps one of our men on business of some sort connected with the late inquest, but in spite of that I felt a strange sort of uneasiness as I entered the half open door of the sitting room. There was no one there. The lamp burned silently, and there was not a sound. T took up the light, and looked into the bedroom ; it was empty ; into the kitchen, and other apartments. There was not a living being in any of them. I felt wholly puzzled, and I must confess to it half frightened. The cottage was so awfully so utterly unsuggestive of living habitation, that I could not help permitting my mind to wander towards the possibility of unearthly interference in mundane affairs ; still there was the lamp in my hand, tangible enough. Surely nothing but a hand of ilesh and blood had lighted that. As I returned to the front room and replaced the lamp, my eye was caught by a folded paper lying conspicuously in the middle of the table. All the scattered bits of writing material that had been lying there in the morning had been collected by one of the policemen and placed neatly under the ink bottle. The folded paper, however, was lying by itself, and showed conspicuously white on the dark cover of the table. I lifted the missive and found it addressed on the outside, in the same bold hand I had seen twice before in connection with this case, to ' The Police of Melbourne ;' it was unsealed too, and of course I opened and read it. The following are the contents word for word : 'You have shown such an amount of interest in the " Myterious Death at Errol Cottage," that it would be a thousand pities to leave you in the ignorance of facts in which you have bogged yourselves ; so I come here to this house and write at this table a simple statement of the said facts that you may not live in ignorance of your own obtusencss. Here am I, a murderess, sitting in the house in which I did the deed, and within sound of a policeman's footfall, and yet I am no more afraid of recognition or capture than I am of the appearance of my victim's pale ghost. ' The simple truth, then, is this :—I had a lover one year ago, whom 1 loved as such a woman as J can only love ; and the whitefaced Alice Lennam came between me and the man I would have died for. Well, 1 shed no tears, but I inveigled that girl here by a stupid story that her lover (who had been mine) was 'ill and alone, and she paid the penalty of her miserable life for her sin against my happiness.

' It was I, in disguise, who engaged the cottage. It was I who cut off the girl's hair, and sold it, and it was I who left her to the police for burial. Could I have conceived a moro humiliating fate for even her dead body i would have consigned Alice Lennam to it.

' At .94, Maine street, Adelaide, you will hear of Alice Lennam living, and now you know all that you will ever know of 'Jane Banks.' And it was all we ever did know, except the few particulars gained from the landlady of the lodging house, 94, Maine street, Adelaide. The two girls had lived there. Alice Lennam was an orphan, and a sewing machine girl, Jane Banks a lady's maid in a first-rate family, and a friend of the machinist. Of Jane Banks' cause for jealousy, and her lodger's fate, the woman knew nothing, nor has there since been heard a word of the self-styled murderess. There were many inclined to think the letter a hoax, but I was not one of the many. Errol Cottage has had many occupants since, and I never see a light in that window, without thinking of the Shadow on the Blind.