The Nine Lanterns

Miss Carrow's lodgings were at Number 41 Guilford Street, in a tall brick house occupied on the ground floor by a milliner and on the upper floors by single women in respectable employment. Her landlady was a Mrs. Birch, who kept a kind of irreproachable order in the house and required of her tenants the observance of ten o'clock at night, two references, and the occasional mending of her cat's basket. Wren reached the house at twenty-five minutes past six. The area-lamp had been lit; the drawing-room window on the first floor was lit also. He rang the bell. Mrs. Birch received him with the conditional civility that landladies reserve for strange men at dusk, and said that Miss Carrow had come in at a quarter past three, had lain down for an hour, had come downstairs at half-past four, had taken a cup of tea in the kitchen, and had gone out again at a few minutes past five, saying that she had an errand and would return before dinner at seven. She had not yet returned. "Did she say where she was going?" "She did not, sir. Only that she had an errand." "Did she receive any communication since she came in?" "A boy came to the door at a quarter to five. He had a note for her. She came down to take it. I did not see the note." "Did she keep it?" "I did not see her burn it, sir. She might have done." "Has she taken anything with her? A bag, a — " "Her black umbrella. Her