Jim wasn’t a murderer.
No man who could laugh and sing and play the fool, be so earnest and grave one moment and full of gaiety the next, could kill a man in cold blood. Downstairs the front door banged.
It always banged when Jim came but, of late, her heart hadn’t jumped on hearing it and she hadn’t waited for a few sickening minutes to see whether he had returned. He wouldn’t return; she had to make up her mind to that. But—there were still dreams. Or memories which had turned into dreams.
She would seem to hear him running up the stairs and humming Peggy O’Neil, waiting until her hand was at the door and then bursting out: “With Charles, Peter and Anne” Then he would grab her by the waist and lift her—a trick-hold he had perfected, for she was no feather-weight. He would carry her over to the window, demanding to know what she’d been doing with her time that day and had she earned enough to keep him in idle luxury for another week?
And there had been the times when he had walked up slowly and soberly and been earnest and solemn, hugging her tightly, and saying: “Sorry, I’m a bit low to-day. What a mess the world’s in! Got me down rather, so I’ve come for some cheering up.”
After a while they’d think of Charles, Peter and Anne—a panacea for all the moods of gloom.
It was twenty-nine days since she had seen him.
On the first she had been worried and puzzled; on the second, frantic; on the third, horrified. For the police had come and asked a great number of questions about him and taken away a few oddments he’d left in the two-roomed flat, including a copy of the photograph. They hadn’t told her why they’d come but they had left a man in the street to watch. Next day his photograph had appeared on the front page of all the newspapers. James Arden Mellor whom the police wish to interview in connection with the Nelson Street Murder. Day after day paragraphs had appeared about him and the fact that he’d disappeared. But after a while he stopped being news and the police stopped watching her and following her about.