As he was known not to be very steady, it was generally supposed that the old man did not altogether approve of his daughter’s engagement.

“Mrs Pitt, residing in the flat immediately below the one occupied by the Dykes, had stated, moreover, that on Wednesday the 18th, at about midday, she heard very loud and angry voices proceeding from above, Miss Amelia’s shrill tones being specially audible. Shortly afterwards she saw Wyatt go out of the house; but the quarrel continued for some little time without him, for the neighbours could still hear Miss Amelia’s high-pitched voice, speaking very excitedly and volubly.

“‘An hour later,’ further explained Mrs Pitt, ‘I met Miss Dyke on the stairs; she seemed very flushed and looked as if she had been crying. I suppose she saw that I noticed this, for she stopped and said to me:

“‘“All this fuss, you know, Mrs Pitt, because Alfred asked me to go for a drive with him this afternoon, but I am going all the same.”’

“‘Later in the afternoon – it must have been quite half past four, for it was getting dark – young Wyatt drove up in a motor car, and presently I heard Miss Dyke’s voice on the stairs saying very pleasantly and cheerfully: “All right, Daddy, we shan’t be long.” Then Mr Dyke must have said something which I didn’t hear, for she added, “Oh, that’s all right; I am well wrapped up, and we have plenty of rugs.”’

“Mrs Pitt then went to her window and saw Wyatt and Amelia Dyke start off in a motor. She concluded that the old man had been mollified, for both Amelia and Wyatt waved their hands affectionately up towards the window. They returned from their drive about six o’clock; Wyatt saw Amelia to the door, and then went off again. The next day Miss Dyke went to Scotland.

“As you see,” continued the man in the corner, “Alfred Wyatt had become a very important personality in this case; he was Amelia’s sweetheart, and it was strange – to say the least of it – that she had never as yet even mentioned his name. Therefore, when she was recalled in order to give further evidence, you may be sure that she was pretty sharply questioned on the subject of Alfred Wyatt.

“In her evidence before the coroner, she adhered fairly closely to her original statement:

“‘I did not mention Mr Wyatt’s name,’ she explained, ‘because I did not think it was of any importance; if he knew anything about my dear father’s mysterious fate he would have come forward at once, of course, and helped me to find out who the cowardly murderer was who could attack a poor, crippled old man. Mr Wyatt was devoted to my father, and it is perfectly ridiculous to say that daddy objected to my engagement; on the contrary, he gave us his full consent, and we were going to be married directly after the New Year, and continue to live with father in the flat.’

“‘But,’ questioned the coroner, who had not by any means departed from his severity, ‘what about this quarrel which the last witness overheard on the subject of your going out driving with Mr Wyatt?’

“‘Oh, that was nothing,’ replied Miss Dyke very quietly. ‘Daddy only objected because he thought that it was rather too late to start at four o’clock, and that I should be cold. When he saw that we had plenty of rugs he was quite pleased for me to go.’

“‘Isn’t it rather astonishing, then,’ asked the coroner, ‘seeing that Mr Wyatt was on such good terms with your father, that he did not go to see him while you were away?’

“‘Not at all,’ she replied unconcernedly; ‘Alfred went down to Edinburgh on the Thursday evening. He couldn’t travel with me in the morning, for he had some business to see to in town that day; but he joined me at my friends’ house on the Friday morning, having travelled all night.’

“‘Ah!’ remarked the coroner dryly, ‘then he had not seen your father since you left.’

“‘Oh yes,’ said Miss Amelia; ‘he called round to see dad during the day, and found him looking well and cheerful.’

“Miss Amelia Dyke, as she gave this evidence, seemed absolutely unconscious of saying anything that might in any way incriminate her lover. She is a handsome, though somewhat coarse-looking, woman, nearer thirty I should say, than she would care to own. I was present at the inquest, mind you, for that case had too many mysteries about it from the first for it to have eluded my observation, and I watched her closely throughout. Her voice struck me as fine and rich, with – in this instance also – a shade of coarseness in it; certainly, it was very far from being high-pitched, as Mrs Pitt had described it.

“When she had finished her evidence she went back to her seat, looking neither flustered nor uncomfortable, although many looks of contempt and even of suspicion were darted at her from every corner of the crowded court.

“Nor did she lose her composure in the slightest degree when Mr Parlett, clerk to Messrs Snow and Patterson, solicitors, of Bedford Row, in his turn came forward and gave evidence; only while the little man spoke her full red lips curled and parted with a look of complete contempt.

“Mr Parlett’s story was indeed a remarkable one, inasmuch as it suddenly seemed to tear asunder the veil of mystery which so far had surrounded the murder of old Dyke by supplying it with a motive – a strong motive, too: the eternal greed of gain.

“In June last, namely, it appears that Messrs Snow and Patterson received intimation from a firm of Melbourne solicitors that a man of the name of Dyke had died there recently, leaving a legacy of £4,000 to his only brother, James Arthur Dyke, a mining engineer, who in 1890 was residing at Lisson Grove Crescent. The Melbourne solicitors in their communication asked for Messrs Snow and Patterson’s kind assistance in helping them to find the legatee.

“The search was easy enough, since James Arthur Dyke, mining engineer, had never ceased to reside at Lisson Grove Crescent. Armed, therefore, with full instructions from their Melbourne correspondent, Messrs Snow and Patterson communicated with Dyke, and after a little preliminary correspondence, the sum of £4,000 in Bank of Australia notes and various securities were handed over by Mr Parlett to the old cripple.

“The money and securities were – so Mr Parlett understood – subsequently deposited by Mr Dyke at the Portland Road Branch of the London and South-western Bank: as the old man apparently died intestate, the whole of the £4,000 would naturally devolve upon his only daughter and natural legatee.

“Mind you, all through the proceedings the public had instinctively felt that money was somewhere at the bottom of this gruesome and mysterious crime. There is not much object in murdering an old cripple except for purposes of gain, but now Mr Parlett’s evidence had indeed furnished a damning motive for the appalling murder.

“What more likely than that Alfred Wyatt, wanting to finger that £4,000, had done away with the old man? And if Amelia Dyke did not turn away from him in horror, after such a cowardly crime, then she must have known of it and had perhaps connived in it.

“As for Nicholson, the charwoman, her evidence had certainly done more to puzzle everybody all round than any other detail in this strange and mysterious crime.

“She deposed that on Friday, 13th November, in answer to an advertisement in the Marylebone Star, she had called on Miss Dyke at Lisson Grove, when it was arranged that she should do a week’s work at the flat, beginning Thursday, the 19th, from seven in the morning until six in the afternoon. She was to keep the place clean, get Mr Dyke – who, she understood, was an invalid – all his meals, and make herself generally useful to him.

“Accordingly, Nicholson turned up on the Thursday morning. She let herself into the flat, as Miss Dyke had entrusted the latchkey to her, and went on with the work. Mr Dyke was in bed, and she got him all his meals that day. She thought she was giving him satisfaction, and was very astonished when, at six o’clock, having cleared away his tea, he told her that he would not require her again. He gave her no explanation, asked her for the latchkey, and gave her her full week’s money – seven shillings in full. Nicholson then put on her bonnet, and went away.

“Now,” continued the man in the corner, leaning excitedly forward, and marking each sentence he uttered with an exquisitely complicated knot in his bit of string, “an hour later, another neighbour, Mrs Marsh, who lived on the same floor as the Dykes, on starting to go out, met Alfred Wyatt on the landing. He took off his hat to her, and then knocked at the door of the Dykes’ flat.

“When she came home at eight o’clock, she again passed him on the stairs; he was then going out. She stopped to ask him how Mr Dyke was, and Wyatt replied: ‘Oh, fairly well, but he misses his daughter, you know.’

“Mrs Marsh, now closely questioned, said that she thought Wyatt was carrying a large parcel under his arm, but she could not distinguish the shape of the parcel as the angle of the stairs, where she met him, was very dark. She stated, though, that he was running down the stairs very fast.

“It was on all that evidence that the police felt justified in arresting Alfred Wyatt for the murder of James Arthur Dyke, and Amelia Dyke for connivance in the crime. And now this very morning, those two young people have been brought before the magistrate, and at this moment evidence – circumstantial, mind you, but positively damning – is being heaped upon them by the prosecution. The police did their work quickly.