Page 84 of Murder on Cold Street
Mr. Woodhollow nodded. “Mrs. Norwich is very particular about punctuality and my watch is the same kind carried by railway guards.”
He pulled out his pocket watch to show Charlotte. She checkedthe time it displayed against that on her own, even as her mind leaped in all directions.
Five minutes to midnight. The woman Mr. Woodhollow saw couldn’t have been Mrs. Treadles, who went inside 33 Cold Street at half past twelve. Nor could she have been Miss Hendricks, who entered only after Mrs. Treadles had left.
“Could you tell the woman’s identity?”
Mr. Woodhollow returned the watch to a pocket on his waistcoat. “She was already halfway in when I saw her, so I didn’t see her face, and her movement was too quick for me to discern what she was wearing, except that it was dark in color, which was what Miss Hendricks usually wears.
“I was confused. Miss Hendricks didn’t have any keys to that house; only I did, one to the back door, and one to the chief bedroom. I didn’t know how she was able to open the door—or why she was going there without first setting up a rendezvous with me. Yet who else could it have been, going into that particular house at night?
“I meant to cross the garden right away to check, but just then Mr. Eldridge from 60 Rengate Street decided to take a stroll in the garden with his friend. They often do that, debating all sorts of topics at all hours. Except this time, instead of strolling, they planted themselves directly in the middle of the garden, and I wouldn’t have been able to go from my house to 33 Cold Street without being seen.”
Mr. Woodhollow’s fingers knotted together. “It’s always been my fear that one day Miss Hendricks would realize that I’m just an uneducated man from Camden who’s probably risen as high in the world as he will, someone who’ll spend the rest of his life in someone else’s basement. I thought that moment had come. That she’d already put me aside.
“As I was about to give up and go back inside, the philosophers left at last. I rushed to number 33. The door was closed but unlocked. I climbed up the stairs to the room where Miss Hendricksand I normally met. And—” He reddened again. “And I stood outside listening for a bit before I unlocked the door.”
“It was locked?” This was the chief bedroom, the site of the murders.
“Yes, it was locked. I always make sure to lock it after—after we’ve used it. Anyway my heart pounded with relief when I saw that the room was empty. And then I heard two people talking below, a man and a woman. I couldn’t hear every word they said but the man sounded smug and the woman, panicked. Then they stopped talking.
“Miss Hendricks told me that she’d had such an employer once, a man she could not afford to be caught alone with. For an entire year under his roof she’d felt like a fugitive, with pursuers always only one step behind and around every bend.”
A look of unhappy guilt crossed his features, as if he blamed himself for Miss Hendricks’s erstwhile distress.
“I wanted to do something but I didn’t dare show my face. The idea came to me to make a loud noise. I slammed the door hard. And when I opened it again, as quietly as I could, I heard the woman shout, ‘Out of my way!’ followed by footsteps running off.
“I was ever so relieved. And then I heard someone coming up the stairs.” He swallowed. “All the other doors in the house were locked. The only way I could avoid being seen was by leaving through a window. So I did that.
“Thankfully the façade of the house offered plenty of footing and there was no one else on the street. My coat got caught on a finial as I jumped from the small balcony one level below to the street, but luckily I wasn’t hurt. I yanked my coat free and ran down the street until I came to the next gap between the houses, where there was another gate. There I climbed into the garden and went back to Mrs. Norwich’s house, shaking all the way.”
His hands trembled in his lap, even though he clamped them together tightly.
Charlotte gave him a moment to recover from the fright that assailed him anew. “I take it you didn’t say anything to the police?”
He shook his head. “I would have lost my position if I’d admitted to the police that I’d been in number 33 that night. It’s the only position I’ve got and I need to save for at least another ten or twelve years before I’ll have enough to... Well, besides, I did hear the names of those two people in the dining room when they spoke to each other. Mrs. Treadles’s husband already punished the man who would have assaulted her, didn’t he?”
Not an answer Inspector Treadles would have wanted to hear.
As for what Charlotte wanted to hear, Mr. Woodhollow had already revealed himself to be both the person who slammed the door and the one who left from the window and had his coat caught on the finial. Would the keys in his hands lead to any clues?
“If I understand correctly, the problem with Mrs. Norwich’s coal hatch happened because you realized that number 33 wouldn’t be let for a while and that if you could get your hands on those keys, you’d have access to a place where you and Miss Hendricks could meet in relative safety.”
Mr. Woodhollow shifted on his seat. “Please, Miss Holmes, I know what I’ve done wasn’t right, but please don’t think of me as a criminal. I’ve been in service since I was twelve, starting as a hallboy, and I’ve never taken so much as a spoon from any employer.”
Charlotte looked at him. “But you made duplicates of keys that didn’t belong to you.”
He lowered his gaze. “When I left home, I meant to also leave behind everythingaboutthat home. But I guess I still know how to take impressions of keys and where to get duplicates made without questions asked.”
“Did you ever let anyone else have the keys?”
“Absolutely not. Never.”
“And you have the keys still?”
“I can surrender them now if you’d like,” he said glumly. “I don’t imagine Miss Hendricks will wish to go back to number 33 again.”
Charlotte sighed. “Mr. Woodhollow, I assume you have notspoken to Miss Hendricks since that night. You left number 33 believing that she had not betrayed your trust. She, on the other hand—”
