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right into her face. She’ll meet him on the waste-ground.’ But the man passed on, so the ladies were disappointed.

    Miss M’Intyre was innocently on the way home to Sandyford Place from a visit to her brother; she was spending a few nights at No. 80. She passed by Mrs Walker and Miss Dykes; and she, also, saw the woman (in a grey cloak or grey shawl) as she turned off into the lane. At the corner of Sandyford Place there was a little group of people, apparently discussing something that had just occurred to surprise or alarm them; something they ‘had heard’, some sound that they thought had ‘come from that house where the light is’. They broke up as she approached; and then as she passed No. 17 she too heard a sound that made her stop and listen: a low, wailing noise, like the moaning of a person in very great distress. ‘There was no wind that night, a calm night. The sound was quite distinctly audible to me, a moaning, doleful kind of sound which rather frightened me.’ There was a light in one or both of the windows in the area.
    She stood still for a little while listening, wondering whether she ought not to go and investigate; but she was frightened, and after the one long moan the sound did not come again. She walked on as fast as she could along Sandyford Place.
    A quarter past eleven.
    P.C. Campbell plodded on round his beat, plagued by those bothersome prostitutes and drunks on the waste ground, hearing nothing, seeing nothing, while the skirts of fame whisked by him.
    Mr Stewart, a jeweller, lived at No. 16. The house adjoined No. 17, to the west of it, the lay-outs being similar; and Mr Stewart slept in the room corresponding to old Mr Fleming’s on the first floor: overlooking the back garden, that is, and above, though not directly above, the Flemings’ kitchen.
    Mr Stewart got home at about half-past ten on the night of the murder. His family had just gone off to the country, but he called up the maid and a little girl who was keeping her company and they all ‘had worship’. He then went to bed and fell asleep at once, before he had even had time to settle himself comfortably—still sitting half upright, his head resting on the head-board, and therefore separated only by the board from the party wall between the two houses.
    He ‘wakened in a fright’. He couldn’t be sure what had waked him, but he thought it was a scream, and his first impression wasthat it had come from within the room—his second that it couldn’t have, because there was nobody in the house (he had presumably forgotten the maid and the little girl downstairs). He looked out of the window and saw that it was still pitch dark: he thought it must be about midnight or not later than one o’clock. He listened but he heard no more and he went off to sleep again.
    P.C. Campbell trudged on.
    The sun rose at 3.41 that morning. At about four o’clock three sisters came rolling happily home from their brother’s wedding celebrations—though one hastens to say that Peterina at least had had ‘only half a glass of wine at the marriage and no spirits nor any other liquor’, and there is no suggestion that the others had been less abstemious. They were Margaret, Jessie and Peterina M’Lean, and the eldest was twenty-four.
    It was ‘a lovely morning, still and calm’. In a tree outside one of the houses in Sandyford Place a whole flock of little birds had gathered and were singing their hearts out. Delighted, the three girls stopped to listen. As they stood there they observed that there was a light on in the house: the blinds of the front ground-floor room (the dining-room) were down, but in the centre of one several slats were open, and through these they could all distinctly see the gasolier hanging from the ceiling, in which one or two of the lights were burning. ‘How curious,’ said Margaret, ‘to have a light burning at