OLD LADY'S DEATH

Evening Star, Issue 23861, 16 April 1941, Page 10

OLD LADY'S DEATH

COSTLY JEWELERY IN HER HANDS She was just the Quaint Old Lady to the other people in the shelter, wrote a reporter in the Loudon ‘ Daily Mail.’ Every evening she would arrive without fail, grey-haired, frail, in rusty black, clutching a bundle of blankets and a little leather bag. She did not talk much, but she did mention to the vicar, the Rev. W. M. Cuthbert, that her home in Golders Green had been damaged by a bomb. Always she would settle down well away from everyone else. She was particular that it should bo somewhere under a light. She would always place her leather bag beneath her head. “ It’s her hoard of. wealth,” the others would whisper. Then came the night when she was missing from the shelter. She was missed for two nights, three . . . then a neighbour told the police that milk and papers wore still outside the Quaint Old Lady’s flat. They forced a way in. One glance showed them the greyhaired figure lying_ dead, and in her arms was the solution to the riddle of the little leather bag. She was clasping a diamond necklace, four rings, brooches. Among her papers was a letter from a London firm offering £IO,OOO for her jewellery. She is said to have owned a 200-gumca sable coat. The Quaint Old Lady died a natural death. She was seventy, and her name was Airs Lilian Barnes. For 12 years she had lived alone and aloof, suspicious of every visitor. Police are now trying to trace her relatives.