Chapter 7

THE GRANGE AT WOODBURY

I stopped for three weeks in Jane's lodgings; and before the end of
that time, Jane and I had got upon the most intimate footing. It was
partly her kindliness that endeared her to me, and her constant
sense of continuity with the earlier days which I had quite
forgotten; but it was partly too, I felt sure, a vague revival
within my own breast of a familiarity that had long ago subsisted
between us. I was coming to myself again, on one side of my nature.
Day by day I grew more certain that while facts had passed away from
me, appropriate emotions remained vaguely present. Among the
Woodbury people that I met, I recognised none to say that I knew
them; but I knew almost at first sight that I liked this one and
disliked that one. And in every case alike, when I talked the matter
over afterwards with Jane, she confirmed my suspicion that in my
First State I had liked or disliked just those persons respectively.
My brain was upset, but my heart remained precisely the same as
ever.

On my second morning I went up to The Grange with her. The house was
still unlet. Since the day of the murder, nobody cared to live in
it. The garden and shrubbery had been sadly neglected: Jane took me
out of the way as we walked up the path, to show me the place where
the photographic apparatus had been found embedded in the grass, and
where the murderer had cut his hands getting over the wall in his
frantic agitation. The wall was pretty high and protected with
bottle-glass. I guessed he must have been tall to scramble over it.
That seemed to tell against Jane's crude idea that a woman might
have done it.

But when I said so to Jane, she met me at once with the crushing
reply: "Perhaps it wasn't the same person that came back for the
box." I saw she was right again. I had jumped at a conclusion. In
cases like this, one must leave no hypothesis untried, jump at no
conclusions of any sort. Clearly, that woman ought to have been made
a detective.

As I entered the house the weird sense of familiarity that pursued
me throughout rose to a very high pitch. I couldn't fairly say,
indeed, that I remembered the different rooms. All I could say with
certainty was that I had seen them before. To this there were three
exceptions--the three that belonged to my Second State--the library,
my bedroom, and the hall and staircase. The first was indelibly
printed on my memory as a component part of the Picture, and I found
my recollection of every object in the room almost startling in its
correctness. Only, there was an alcove on one side that I'd quite
forgotten, and I saw why most clearly. I stood with my back to it as
I looked at the Picture. The other two bits I remembered as the