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THE CINEMA MURDER

BY E. PHILLIPS OPPENHEIM

1917




BOOK I



CHAPTER I

With a somewhat prolonged grinding of the brakes and an unnecessary
amount of fuss in the way of letting off steam, the afternoon train from
London came to a standstill in the station at Detton Magna. An elderly
porter, putting on his coat as he came, issued, with the dogged aid of
one bound by custom to perform a hopeless mission, from the small,
redbrick lamp room. The station master, occupying a position of vantage
in front of the shed which enclosed the booking office, looked up and
down the lifeless row of closed and streaming windows, with an expectancy
dulled by daily disappointment, for the passengers who seldom alighted.
On this occasion no records were broken. A solitary young man stepped out
on to the wet and flinty platform, handed over the half of a third-class
return ticket from London, passed through the two open doors and
commenced to climb the long ascent which led into the town.

He wore no overcoat, and for protection against the inclement weather
he was able only to turn up the collar of his well-worn blue serge coat.
The damp of a ceaselessly wet day seemed to have laid its cheerless
pall upon the whole exceedingly ugly landscape. The hedges, blackened
with smuts from the colliery on the other side of the <DW72>, were
dripping also with raindrops. The road, flinty and light grey in colour,
was greasy with repellent-looking mud--there were puddles even in the
asphalt-covered pathway which he trod. On either side of him stretched
the shrunken, unpastoral-looking fields of an industrial neighbourhood.
The town-village which stretched up the hillside before him presented
scarcely a single redeeming feature. The small, grey stone houses, hard
and unadorned, were interrupted at intervals by rows of brand-new,
red-brick cottages. In the background were the tall chimneys of several
factories; on the left, a colliery shaft raised its smoke-blackened
finger to the lowering clouds.

After his first glance around at these familiar and unlovely objects,
Philip Romilly walked with his head a little thrown back, his eyes lifted
as though with intent to the melancholy and watery skies. He was a young
man well above medium height, slim, almost inclined to be angular, yet
with a good carriage notwithstanding a stoop which seemed more the
result of an habitual depression than occasioned by any physical
weakness. His features were large, his mouth querulous, a little
discontented, his eyes filled with the light of a silent and rebellious
bitterness which seemed, somehow, to have found a more or less permanent
abode in his face. His clothes, although they were neat, had seen better
days. He was ungloved, and he carried under his arm a small parcel,
which appeared to contain a book, carefully done up in brown paper.

As he reached the outskirts of the village he slackened his pace.
Standing a little way back from the road, from which they were separated
by an ugly, gravelled playground, were the familiar school buildings,
with the usual inscription carved in stone above the door. He laid his
hand upon the wooden gate and paused. From inside he could catch the
drone of children's voices. He glanced at his watch. It was barely twenty
minutes past four. For a moment he hesitated. Then he strolled on, and,
turning at the gate of an adjoining cottage, the nearest to the schools
of a little unlovely row, he tried the latch, found it yield to his
touch, and stepped inside. He closed the