The street of the little country-town, usually so quiet and peaceful, was full of excited people and round a doorway an ever increasing crowd of men and women pushed and jostled. Windows opened and voices called, and over the throng ran a continuous buzz of eager questioning:

"That is it? Who is it? What has happened? " 

An errand-boy left his cycle in the street and elbowed his way to the side of an earlier arrival. 

"What's up, Alf?" he asked, excitedly. 

The other turned with wide eyes and in an awestruck tone mouthed the one word: "Murder:"

 "Oo-er!" breathed the second. "Whots bin murdered?" 

"I dunno," said Alf, and the two fixed their gaze on the front of the house as if by so doing they might penetrate the bricks to the horror behind. 

“Murder!" The word swept over the crowd and men savoured it lusciously, pushing nearer and craning on tip-toe to see over the heads of the luckier ones, gathered round that doorway through which the police had passed. 

A young man in tweeds inserted himself skillfully through the crush.

 "Ere," protested a workman, standing square in his path. "Who are you a-shovin' of? I got as much right to see as yous avn't I?"

The young man bestowed on him the smile with which he lured interviews out of the surliest. "Awfully sorry," he said, “but I’m the 'Record' -- reporter, you know. Have you any idea what's going on?" 

“"Murder!" said the workman, firmly. “That's what it is. Man done ‘is wife in." He sucked his pipe, then withdrew it to point at an upper window. "Up there it was.” 

With a deftness born of practice the reporter slipped under the raised arm and continued his progress to the doorway. The narrow hall was packed with women. At the foot of the stairs a constable blocked their progress and they received the reporter as a godsend. The word flew round: "It's the Record man” and each, seeing herself on the newspage, pressed round him with her story. The flood of their voices over~ whelmed his.

 “Florrie Rawlins it was ... yes, he done it all right ... you should have heard the screams, something ‘orrible .... you could hear them down the street..."

"She's bin asking for it long enough, if you ask me," proclaimed a strident voice above the din. 

"You're right there, Mrs. Jones," the others agreed and a fat: woman took up the tale. 

"Only last week I says to her: ‘There's a limit, ‘I says “to what any man'll stand. Meek he may be, but there'll come a day,’ I says, ‘when the worm'’ll turn. ‘" 

"Ah!" said the chorus. “That's right" "That week he was away," took up another, "there was goings-on as no respectable married woman oughta..." 

"I know," confirmed the fat woman. “I heard the talkings and laughings up there. Met her on the stairs later I did, and I says to her, meaning like:‘So your ‘usband's got back to-night?’ ‘Which he hasn't,’ says she, ‘it's only a friend o'mine looked in.'"

 "Friend!" came the scornful chorus, with a world of meaning, The reporter extricated himself with difficulty and found himself pressed tight against the constable guarding the stairs.

 “Now then!" said the latter, warningly, and then, recognising him, relaxed into a smile. “Oh, it's only you, Sir."

 "Yes," replied the other. "Can I go up?"

 "Sergeant said I was to let no-one up," replied the policeman doubtfully. "It's a murder." His voice was awestruck.

 "I know it is," said the reporter. "That's why I've got to get it for the Record. It's the first murder we've had in the town for years." He breathed deeply. “Something more for thie week's issue that a flower~ show and a whist-drive, eh?"

 ’ The constable leaned back and called a query up the stairs. There was a pause and then a face appeared over the banisters and a subdued voice called:

 "You can come up, Sir." 

As the reporter turned the bend of the stairs, the voice materialised as a young and pink-faced constable. Making sure that they were out of earshot of the public below and the officials above, he and the reporter greeted one another with cheerful insult. In private they were not Press and Police, but two young men who had been at school together.

 "Well, Face," said the constable, “have you nosed it out already? That's not bad for the local rag.”

 “Lord, no. I was just passing and banged right into it. Say, Mick, it's the most marvellous luck. There hasn't been a murder in the town for years, not since that chap ran amok with a scythe in the cattle-market, just before my time. It's the first I've ever handled."

 "It's the first I've seen too," confided the other. "Sort of queer, isn't it? Gives you a bit of a turn to think that your evidence may help string a man up."

 "Did you see it?" 

"No, only heard the screams. This place is on my beat and I was just up the road." 

A door on the upper floor stood open and a little group was busy within, A doctor knelt on the floor beside the body of a girl, a Police Sergeant wrote steadily in his note-book while, seated on a bed, his hands dangling between his knees, was a man whose eyes, dazed and horror-struck, never moved from the figure on the floor. from his lips there came a confused muttering, of which an odd word or two became audible. 

"Dead! Couldn't be dead... Never meant to, Florrie.. You shouldn't have said it, shouldn't have said it.." 

The Sergeant looked up. “Don't come in, Sir,” he said. "We don't mind you having a jook round but we want everything left as it is.”

 "Right you are, Sergeant," nodded the young man, and let his eyes roam round the untidy room, noting the remains of a meal on the table, the over-turned chair, the shoddy finery of the girl on the floor. Then he lifted an eyebrow at the young constable and the two crossed the landing.

“Can you give me any details, Mick?" Mick opened his notebook and considered. 

"Deceased, Florence Rawlins," he quoted, in his official voice. "Married. Age twenty-three.” 

"'Girl -wife'’, the reporter's brain recorded, automatically. 

“Husband away on a job of work, came home unexpectedly this evening, neighbours heard him go upstairs, sound of a quarrel, deceased's voice saying: 'I swear I never, Jim.'" ‘The constable looked up and lapsed into his normal tone. "At least, that's Mrs. Jones's version of it."

The reporter nodded. “'Frantic denial'" his pencil noted. ‘Neighbour hears her cry: I didn't do it, Jim.’ 

“Occupants of floor below heard crash and came up. Found him standing over her, and her like that. Looks like a clear case of murder, Bill in fact, Rawlins doesn't deny it; says he hit her because she made him see red. She hadn't expected him home and was all dolled up for a evening with another fellow.” There's a chance of manslaughter, but not much, unless they get a lot of women on the jury! I expect he'll swing for it, poor blighter:"

 "She'd been asking for it for some time by what they say down there," the reporter hinted. 

"She had" conceded Mick. “In fact, we'd had our eye on her lately -- the neighbours had been talking, I could tell you a bit about Florrie Rawline." He hesitated, then, with a disarming smile, continued: "But I won't. I don't trust you to keep you mouth shut, not where your precious Record is concerned,"

 “Everything's news, Mick, but a murder is the news of news. Boy, I'm lucky to be in on this!" He patted the pocket that held his notes, "I'll hand in this stuff? right away and then come to the station. Give me all you can, won't you? Wheat he says when charged and all that." 

He slipped down the stairs to where the hero still held the bottom stair in spite of the increasing pressure on his chest, and as he turned the corner one of the women looked up and raised the cry "It's the Record man." Bursting with unappeased curiosity, they surged forward and the policeman braced himself with both hands on the banisters. One glance was enough for Bill. He fled back upstairs and opening a window on the first-floor made a precarious exit over an outhouse and across the backyard. 

It was a mean street in which he found himself, one of the streets which the local Council was always planning to clear away, but never did; it was too crooked for modern traffic, too dangerous for pedestrians with its narrow pavements and jutting houses. For a moment he thought that he had escaped part of the crow. only to be trapped by the rest, for again faces looked from windows and men and women came running. Then he saw that their focus-point was not the house hed left but a spot a little higher up the road. His notebook was burning a hole in his pocket but his news-sense held him and he joined the running figures. A man dashed past him crying: "Fetch ‘the ambulance!" and the reporter's eyes sparkled. ‘Two tragedies at once -- this was glory! What an issue this week's Record would be! 

Then he was in the heart of the crowd and looking down at another woman, poorly but tidily dressed, her hands still clutching a shopping-bag, her head -- but he did not want to look again at her head. 

"Who is it?" he asked, his notebook handy. The woman at his side craned to look, then caught her breath with a gasp. 

"Glory be" she said, and instinctively crossed herself. “It's Mrs. Hopkins: The poor soul and she only left a widow this last week with three little ones."

 A man straightened up, holding in his arms a child who, dazed with the shock of a suddenly motherless world, clung to his collar with frantic fingers.

 "I'm from the Record," murmréd the reporter in his ear. "Can you tell me what's happened?" 

The man turned, his face darkening. "Swine in a sports-car,” he grunted, “doing sixty, I'd swear, and right in the town. Thought the police wouldn't spot him through the side streets, I suppose. He swerved when he saw her and caught her with the wheel -- threw her half across the road. He didn't even stop and it's even chances no one got his number."

His big hand stroked the head of the little girl and his voice softened as he whispered to her:"There, lassie, we'll look after you." 

But the reporter's face had dropped. 

"Oh," he said, dully, “only another road-accident." 

With deft twists he passed through the crowd and, once in the open, sprinted for his office, while through his mind ran gorgeous phrases. "GIRL-WIFE MURDERED.....-AGONISED SCREAMS ....FRANTIC PLEA FOR MERCY....." 

And as he went he chanted to himself, with ecstasy: 

“Oh boy, a murder to cover at last"

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