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There was, for example, twenty guineas set aside for the old lady's burial, eighteen moidores to meet unforeseen contingencies, and in a green purse some thirty or forty shillings, which were to be distributed among poor people of Mrs Duncomb's acquaintance. The ritual of telling over the box contents, if something ghostly, had had its usual effect of comforting the old lady's mind.
It had belonged to Mrs Duncomb's husband. In the tankard was a hundred pounds. Beside the tankard lay a bag containing guinea pieces to the number of twenty or so. This was the bag that Mrs Rhymer had carried over to the old lady's chair by the fire, in order to take from it the needed guinea.
She had from Mr Twysden, she said, the key of the vacant chambers opposite to Mrs Duncomb's. ``Now let me see, she continued, ``if I cannot get out of the back chamber window into the gutter, and so into Mrs Duncomb's apartment. The other women urged her to try. Mrs Oliphant set off, her heels echoing in the empty rooms.
She drew attention to the wideness of the kitchen chimney and to the weakness of the lock in the door to the vacant rooms on the other side of the landing. She also pointed out that, since the bolt of the spring-lock of the outer door to Mrs Duncomb's rooms had been engaged when they arrived, the miscreants could not have used that exit.
What did rather disturb kindly Mrs Love was the fact that she found Mrs Duncomb's outer door closed an unwonted fact and it faintly surprised her that no odour of cooking greeted her nostrils. Mrs Love knocked. There was no reply. She knocked, indeed, at intervals over a period of some fifteen minutes, still obtaining no response.
It is not at all unlikely that Sarah, having been charwoman to the old lady, and with the propensities picked up from her Shoreditch acquaintances, had made herself familiar with the locks on the landing. So that she may have waited her hour in the empty rooms, and have got into Mrs Duncomb's by the same method used by Mrs Oliphant after the murder.
``Next day, being Saturday, I went between seven and eight in the evening to see Mrs Duncomb's maid, Elizabeth Harrison, who was very bad. I stayed a little while with her, and went down, and Mary Tracey and the two Alexanders came to me about ten o'clock, according to appointment. On this statement the whole implication of Tracey and the Alexanders by Sarah stands or falls.
At two o'clock another gentleman came, and called the watch to light his candle, upon which I went farther upstairs, and soon after this I heard Mrs Duncomb's door open; James Alexander came out, and said, `Now is the time. Then Mary Tracey and Thomas Alexander went in, but I stayed upon the stair to watch. I had told them where Mrs Duncomb's box stood.
He asked me if it was Mrs Duncomb's, and I said yes. Peter Buck, a prisoner. The Court: ``Johnson, were those her words: `This is the money and bag that I took'? Johnson: ``Yes, and she desired me to make away with the bag. Johnson's evidence was confirmed in part by Alstone, another officer of the prison.
To Sir John Duncomb's lodging in the Pell Mell, in order to the money spoken of in the morning; and there awhile sat and discoursed: and I find that he is a very proper man for business, being very resolute and proud, and industrious.
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