Heaven Knows Who by Christianna Brand

a woman might well be implicated. As early as Monday, the day of the discovery, they were asking Miss Dykes whether she had seen a woman enter the lane behind Sandyford Place that night. How they can have got on to this, one can’t imagine: if Mrs Walker had told them of the woman in grey who turned into the lane while they two stood gossiping, Miss Dykes would surely have been reminded of this episode, but in fact it was not until much later that she recalled it. It may simply be that the police were asking all persons living thereabouts after any woman who might have; come to the house—with no reference to the woman Miss Dykes and Mrs Walker saw.
    On July 9, at any rate—the Wednesday—Lundie, the pawnbroker had laid information as to the missing silver having been left with him; and a description of the woman who had pledged it was given in the newspapers—a fair or sandy-haired woman with an oval face, whose hands and arms were too white to be those of a working woman. This description was later altered for no apparent reason: the woman, on the contrary, had been very dark with a hard, hatchet face, short, and ‘ordinarily stout’. But long before she read either description, Mrs Campbell must surely have been growing suspicious. She would hear of the murder on the Monday night or Tuesday morning, would learn that the woman had already been dead some days. Her first question would surely have been to Jessie, ‘Didn’t you go to see her on Saturday evening?’ Jessie would say, no doubt, that she had changed her mind; but now a new and terrible idea wouldstrike Mrs Campbell. She had let Mrs M’Lachlan in at nine the next morning. She probably thought at the time, if she thought about it at all, that her landlady had been out already and was coming in again. But in the light of the murder giving it closer attention—that couldn’t be: for how could she have come in when she returned from her visit that night, since she had no key? And now she would recall the bundle carried under the cloak, the change of dress, the sudden acquisition of money.… And, with much inward shrinking, no doubt, for she seems from the way she gave her evidence to have been an honest, good-hearted woman, she would confide her shocking fears to first one friend, then another, and wonder what she ought to do. Mrs Adams would hear of it, almost certainly, and Sarah would soon get to know and so the match would be set to the first small kindlings of the bonfire of gossip, conjecture and ‘information to the police’. The pawnbroker’s (first) description would be added confirmation and Jessie was known to frequent such places, albeit by proxy. It may well have been the deciding factor. At any rate that day, the day the description was published—it was also the day of old Fleming’s apprehension, however, which does rather point to him as the informant—the police became interested for the first time in Mrs M’Lachlan. They set a watch on the house, three times came and questioned her, and at four o’clock on the Sunday made their spring. The child was hastily handed over into Mrs Campbell’s care, and Jessie and her husband were bundled into a cab and driven off, both under arrest, on charges of murder and theft.
    Now the hunt was up. With Jessie out of the way, the bonfire of scandal really got going.
    The police within the next few days were very active indeed around the Broomielaw. There was a good deal of juggling over keys—which amounted to this, that there proved to be no existing ‘check key’ to the front door of her ‘house’, and that no other key in the place could be found to fit it. Mary Adams must have told about the allegedly burnt crinoline, for a detective went off round to their house and there took possession of the wires that had been given her to cut down for Sarah. On part of these wires he ‘considered there had