“The coroner’s jury returned an open verdict, and Detective-Inspector Jones was charged by the police to make some inquiries about young Mr. Greenhill, whose intimacy with the unfortunate woman had been universally commented upon.

“The detective, however, pushed his investigations as far as the Birkbeck Bank.  There he discovered that after her interview with Mr. Allman, Mrs. Owen had withdrawn what money she had on deposit, some L800, the result of twenty-five years’ saving and thrift.

“But the immediate result of Detective-Inspector Jones’s labours was that Mr. Arthur Greenhill, lithographer, was brought before the magistrate at Bow Street on the charge of being concerned in the death of Mrs. Owen, caretaker of the Rubens Studios, Percy Street.

“Now that magisterial inquiry is one of the few interesting ones which I had the misfortune to miss,” continued the man in the corner, with a nervous shake of the shoulders.  “But you know as well as I do how the attitude of the young prisoner impressed the magistrate and police so unfavourably that, with every new witness brought forward, his position became more and more unfortunate.

“Yet he was a good-looking, rather coarsely built young fellow, with one of those awful Cockney accents which literally make one jump.  But he looked painfully nervous, stammered at every word spoken, and repeatedly gave answers entirely at random.

“His father acted as lawyer for him, a rough-looking elderly man, who had the appearance of a common country attorney rather than of a London solicitor.

“The police had built up a fairly strong case against the lithographer.  Medical evidence revealed nothing new:  Mrs. Owen had died from exposure, the blow at the back of the head not being sufficiently serious to cause anything but temporary disablement.  When the medical officer had been called in, death had intervened for some time; it was quite impossible to say how long, whether one hour or five or twelve.

“The appearance and state of the room, when the unfortunate woman was found by Mr. Charles Pitt, were again gone over in minute detail.  Mrs. Owen’s clothes, which she had worn during the day, were folded neatly on a chair.  The key of her cupboard was in the pocket of her dress.  The door had been slightly ajar, but both the windows were wide open; one of them, which had the sash-line broken, had been fastened up most scientifically with a piece of rope.

“Mrs. Owen had obviously undressed preparatory to going to bed, and the magistrate very naturally soon made the remark how untenable the theory of an accident must be.  No one in their five senses would undress with a temperature at below zero, and the windows wide open.

“After these preliminary statements the cashier of the Birkbeck was called and he related the caretaker’s visit at the bank.