The Glenlitten Murder E-Book

E. Phillips Oppenheim

• Herausgeber: Ktoczyta.pl
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Beschreibung

Glenlitten Manor is the home of Andrew, Marquis Glenlitten, and his lovely, tiny, vivacious French wife, Felice. On the night of a small game hunt, the unsavory Baron de Bresset is murdered and the priceless Glenlitten diamond is stolen. Who stole the necklace and killed de Bresset? The subplot around the origins of Felice, who was orphaned in a French chateau at a very young age, form an interesting side story. Suspects include Sir Richard Cotton, the famous London criminal lawyer, Sir Richard Haslam, the African colonial administrator, and Prince Charles de Seuss, the impoverished Russian nobleman. Very formulaic, with some interesting descriptions of English country house life just prior to the Great Depression.

Leseprobe

Contents

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER V

CHAPTER VI

CHAPTER VII

CHAPTER VIII

CHAPTER IX

CHAPTER X

CHAPTER XI

CHAPTER XII

CHAPTER XIII

CHAPTER XIV

CHAPTER XV

CHAPTER XVI

CHAPTER XVII

CHAPTER XVIII

CHAPTER XIX

CHAPTER XX

CHAPTER XXI

CHAPTER XXII

CHAPTER XXIII

CHAPTER XXIV

CHAPTER XXV

CHAPTER XXVI

CHAPTER XXVII

CHAPTER XXVIII

CHAPTER XXIX

CHAPTER XXX

CHAPTER I

Glenlitten, although a country house of antiquity and tradition, was in these modern days a free and easy place, so far as the entertainment of its guests was concerned. The state drawing-rooms were seldom opened, and the general meeting place for cocktails before dinner and coffee afterwards was the great hall which had been transformed into a lounge, and which led into the old picture gallery, now a ballroom. Andrew Glenlitten, sixth Marquis, sunburnt, blue-eyed, in appearance and speech younger than his thirty-two years, moved cheerfully about amongst his guests, superintending the service of cocktails.

“Sorry my wife’s a few minutes late, Dick,” he apologised, resting his hand for a moment affectionately upon the shoulder of the famous criminal lawyer. “My fault, I am afraid. We went down to see old Heggs about the stands for to-morrow, and he kept us gassing for over an hour.”

“I am looking forward immensely to meeting your wife,” Sir Richard observed, helping himself, after a moment’s hesitation, to a second cocktail. “Are we a large party?”

“A very small one,” his host replied. “There’s yourself, my sister Susan–you haven’t forgotten of course?”

“Scarcely,” Cotton acknowledged, glancing towards a fair-haired, good-natured looking woman, apparently a few years older than her brother, who was curled up upon a sofa, smoking a cigarette and reading the evening paper. “We don’t meet much nowadays, but I was nearly her godfather. Who is the tall, thin man with an eyeglass? I don’t seem to remember him.”

“You probably wouldn’t,” his host remarked. “His name is Haslam–Rodney Haslam. He is a commissioner out in West Africa. Then there’s Jimmy Manfield, talking to De Besset. Jimmy was at Eton with me–no end of a swell in the county now. They’ve just made him Lord Lieutenant. De Besset, you wouldn’t know, I suppose. He is a Frenchman, and a very good fellow–a great polo player and gambler –but I don’t fancy he’s much use with a gun. His people own all the land round where Félice was brought up, and she and I ran across him at Deauville. Then that’s Lady Manfield–the dark little woman talking to Bobby.”

“Bobby who?” Sir Richard queried.

“Bobby Grindells. You’ll come across him later in life if he’s in luck. He’s a youthful barrister–a good sort, and, although I’m not cadging, an odd brief wouldn’t do him any harm. The elderly gentleman in the corner is Doctor Meadows, our local practitioner. That’s every one, I think, except two fellows who are coming over from the barracks and they’re bringing a guest with them–a Russian emigré–Prince something or other… . Ah, here is Félice at last!”

Sir Richard turned toward the great oak staircase, and, although he was rather a hardened old person as regards the other sex, a little murmur of admiration, purely involuntary, escaped him. The appearance of the girl who was slowly descending the wide oak staircase, making what was almost her debut as hostess of Glenlitten, was so entirely unexpected by the majority of her assembled guests that the momentary lull in the conversation which had seemed at first a merely natural effort at politeness, seemed afterwards to lapse into a silence possessed of peculiar and pulsating qualities. They were all used to the sight of beautiful women–their portraits lined both walls of the staircase down which Félice was slowly descending–but about this girl, or child, as she appeared, there were other qualities. She was exquisitely small, with light golden hair of dazzling smoothness. Her brown eyes were deep-set, and looked larger than ever under her dark eyebrows. Her lips were a little parted and the fingers of her right hand clung close to the smooth balustrade. She was rather like a frightened child in her gown of shimmering white and in her obvious nervousness–the single note of possible maturity the exquisite diamonds which flashed upon her throat and neck.

Suddenly her eyes met her husband’s, as he stepped eagerly forward to meet her, and she seemed transformed. The hesitation passed from her movements, brilliant smile answered his. She came gravely forward to be embraced by her sister-in-law, to greet those of the guests whom she had met, and to be introduced by her husband to the others.

“And this, Félice,” the latter concluded, “is one of our great family friends, Sir Richard Cotton. You would have met him before, but he has been in the States for some months. Dick, I hope that you and Félice will be great friends.”

“I do hope so, indeed,” she said, speaking very slowly and with an obvious effort to make her accent as little noticeable as possible. “My husband has spoken of you often, Sir Richard. You are the clever man, are you not, who sends people to prison?”

“Sometimes,” he reminded her, smiling, “I try to keep them out.”

They were all crowding around her now except De Besset, who stood upon the outside of the little circle, watching her with a look purely Gallic in character, the look of a man who can watch without speech or movement. She took a cocktail from the tray and laughed and talked with every one. Once she met De Besset’s eyes and smiled naturally and happily at him.

“You too must drink a cocktail, Comte de Besset,” she begged. “See, it is my first act as hostess–I pass it to you.”

She took one of the richly cut glasses from the tray and handed it across. De Besset accepted it with a bow. He looked over for a moment at his host.

“Madame,” he murmured, “I drink to the great good fortune of the House of Glenlitten.”

Do you know, Lady Glenlitten,” Haslam remarked, leaning over her, “I thought when you appeared upon the stairs just now that a touch of our West African magic had stolen into your veins. You walked as though you were in a trance.”

She looked at him with an appealing little uplift of her eyebrows.

“I was so nervous,” she confessed. “It is the first time that we have received friends. The house is so large. These stairs are so wide, the ceilings so high, those pictures so huge, that I felt smaller than ever. I can scarcely believe that it is really I who am here. In France, the little château where I was brought up was full of quaint, tiny rooms, and my guardian who lived there had not much money, so all the furniture was just Provençal, and homely. I did not see the inside of any other house, and here is something so wonderfully different.”

“You will have to get used to it, my dear,” her husband remarked, resting his hand for a moment caressingly upon her arm. “You’re here for keeps, you know. What about dinner? Is there any one else? Oh, of course, those fellows from the barracks. Here they are, thank God!”

Parkins, the butler, was approaching with his usual smooth, sedate walk, followed by the three expected guests. The two first were of the ordinary British type. The third was obviously a foreigner. He was fair-haired, unusually tall, rather full of feature for the young man he undoubtedly was, and with a drooping line about his clean-shaven mouth which spoiled his otherwise not disagreeable appearance. Glenlitten stepped forward to meet them.

“Fraser and Philipson, isn’t it?” he said, holding out his hand. “So glad the Colonel could spare you both. I see you have brought your friend.”

“Thanks to your kindness, Lord Glenlitten,” the senior of the two men observed. “May I introduce Prince Charles of Suess–the Marquis of Glenlitten.”

Glenlitten shook hands with a pleasant word of greeting. Then he turned around.

“I must present you to my wife,” he said. “This is almost her first appearance down here, and she is, as you may have heard, partly a compatriot of yours.”

For a single second a sense of something unusual throbbed in the atmosphere, which a moment before was gay with light-hearted conversation and chaff. Once more Félice seemed to be fighting against the nervousness which had brought her so timidly down the stairs to greet her guests. She stared past the two men at the tall figure behind, and in her eyes there was an utterly untranslatable light. Then the sound of her husband’s cheery voice dissolved the situation as though by magic.

“My dear,” he said, “I want to present to you two of my officer neighbours from the barracks here– Major Fraser and Captain Philipson. This is their friend too, Prince Charles of Suess. My wife, Lady Glenlitten.”

She was herself again, grave, slower even than usual in her halting speech, but with the ghost of a smile upon her child’s lips.

“I am very glad to have you come to us and to know that we are neighbours,” she said, shaking hands with the two men. “How do you do, Prince Charles. I too am half Russian, but, alas, I was four years old when I left the country, so I fear that we shall not be able to indulge in reminiscences.”

Her fingers rested for a moment in the hand of the young man who towered over her.

“It is perhaps as well,” he said gravely. “There are few things one cares to remember concerning our unhappy country.”

Parkins once more made his dignified appearance.

“My lady,” he announced, “dinner is served.” There was no lack of conversation at dinner time, mostly of the chaffing, good-humoured type common in these days amongst those more or less intimate. Manfield thought that his host was off on a wild-goose chase, trying to kill partridges on the first of September with so much corn standing. Glenlitten chaffed his old schoolfellow about his weakness for big bags and late shooting.

“I like to go after ‘em early, and go often,” he declared. “Leave the cheepers alone, of course, but get at the old ‘uns before they’re wild. My stands aren’t so good for driving as yours.”

The two soldier men, who hoped for invitations from both, sympathized with each point of view. De Besset explained the misunderstood French attitude with regard to the slaying of game, and Prince Charles contributed some anecdotes of bags in Hungary which sounded almost fantastic. Sir Richard Cotton and Manfield succeeded apparently in entertaining and being entertained by their hostess, and Grindells, who was already establishing the reputation of a professional diner- out, was chipping in wherever he thought a word or two useful.

“I’ve got a grudge against you, Sir Richard,” Manfield declared across the table. “You shouldn’t have been so devilish clever about that poor fellow Johnson. If any one else had been in your place he’d have got off, and quite right too.”

“Think so?” the lawyer observed equably. “That wasn’t exactly my idea.”

“Johnson was a good fellow,” Manfield went on; “fought in the war, popular everywhere, and there were some very ugly rumours about the man he killed.”

“This is England, not France,” Sir Richard reminded them calmly. “If a man commits a murder here, and I am for the Crown, it’s my duty to have him found guilty, whatever the provocation may have been. It may not be justice perhaps, sometimes, but the bases of the law are sound. Here and there one poor fellow must suffer that a great principle may remain.”

“Nevertheless,” Manfield insisted. “I say that the case of Johnson is one more nail in the coffin of this rigid administration of exact laws. It is circumstances, not actual deeds, which decide guilt.”

“In West Africa,” Haslam put in, “we are compelled often to abandon statutes altogether in dealing with the natives. Every now and then, the good man kills the black sheep who richly deserves it. I won’t say that we pat the good man on the back, but we don’t hang him.”

“In an uncivilised country,” Sir Richard remarked, “you naturally have more latitude. Here, where every man and woman can read the newspapers and understands the code of the laws, justice must be differently administered.”

“I am afraid, Sir Richard,” Félice murmured, “that you are a very cruel man.”

He smiled.

“I try to fancy myself a just one.”

She looked at his straight, firm mouth, the legal type, without twitch or droop, the lean, clean-shaven face, and the clear, grey eyes.

“I think if I had done wrong,” she confided, “I would not like it to be you who tried to convince the jury that I must be punished.”

He smiled at her once more with the tolerance one shows to a child.

“Lady Glenlitten,” he assured her, “I should refuse the brief. I should plunge myself into the fray on the other side.”

“Now you are becoming more human,” she conceded. “I like people who say nice things to me, and what you have said just now is chivalrous.”

“Don’t you trust him, Lady Glenlitten,” Manfield advised her. “He’s as hard as a flint. You should have heard how merciless he was about that poor fellow Johnson, who was hung last week. Dash it all, if a man commits suicide, you allow him a verdict of ‘Suicide during temporary insanity’, by which you clear him of guilt; why shouldn’t murder sometimes be committed in a fit of ‘temporary insanity’?”

“It very often is,” Sir Richard acknowledged. “There are a great many men who habitually lose their temper, who might be considered technically at times to be in a state of temporary insanity. On the other hand, you couldn’t frame laws to meet such a condition.”

“I wish some one would tell me,” Grindells observed, “why crime and everything to do with crime^ has such a fascination for people nowadays. Every one seems to be dabbling in criminology. I was junior in the Hassell case a short time ago, and I should think I had a hundred applications from well-known people to try to get them into Court.” Sir Richard nodded.

“My office is sometimes besieged.”

“I wonder what it would feel like to commit a real crime,” Félice reflected. “I think sometimes it must be very difficult, if one hates any one very much and knows that they go about doing evil, to keep from it if the opportunity comes.”

“There were some very interesting statistics published the other day,” Glenlitten remarked from the other end of the table. “Taking the three supposedly most civilised countries, the estimate was that seventy-five per cent. of the murders in the world were committed for the sake of, or on account of, a woman, twenty per cent. for financial reasons, including robberies, and the remainder for no particular cause.”

“I,” Prince Charles intervened, “have seen such murders–murders committed for no particular cause. I have seen many of them. I have seen men start by killing people because they believed they were political enemies, and then I have seen them go mad and rush about killing any one, killing just for the sake of killing. I have seen the blood fever. It is a terrible thing.”

Félice shivered a little. Her husband promptly interposed–

“Too much of this talk about crime,” he declared cheerfully. “Dick, did you start talking shop?”

“Not I,” was the prompt reply. “When I come out for a holiday I like to believe in my fellow creatures.”

“If you had the misfortune,” Prince Charles said gloomily, joining once more in the conversation, “to be of my nationality, crime as a subject would not appeal to you. Fortunately for our hostess,” he added, with a little bow towards Félice, “she was too young for those horrors, but for myself I saw things, when I was young loo–barely seventeen–of which I could not speak, to think of which, even now, makes me shudder.”

They looked at him with curiosity. Félice was gazing steadily down the table towards the opposite wall. She had the appearance of one trying to close her senses, to hear nothing of that still, expressionless voice.

“You were in Russia during the revolution?” Glenlitten asked.

“I was training to be a soldier,” the Prince replied. “Many of my relatives were murdered, our estates were seized, the escape of my family was a miracle of which we do not even now dare to speak. Still, none of us will forget; it would be impossible.”

There was a moment’s silence. Every one was interested in the tall, young figure with the cold, grey eyes, seated upright at the table, head and shoulders taller than his neighbours. Suddenly came an interruption from outside. There was a low rumble, and the windows shook. Félice started.

“What’s that?” some one exclaimed.

“Thunder,” Glenlitten groaned. “I was rather afraid of it.”

Félice rose to her feet. The moment had arrived.

“I do not like thunder,” she confessed, a little tremulously. “Lady Manfield, do you wish to come, yes? Lady Susan?”

“Susan, my dear,” her sister-in-law corrected her. “Of course I am ready–and thunder never hurt anybody. Not even the lightning can touch this house: I am sometimes angry with Andrew, he has so many of those hideous conductors nestling around the chimneys.”

The women passed out, gossiping together. Prince Charles, from his place amongst the little semicircle of men who had risen to their feet, held up his glass.

“I shall give you a Russian toast,” he said, “but I shall translate it into English. It is–‘May this house be always free from wind and storm and evil that comes from men.’”

CHAPTER II

The silence of the room, the state bedchamber of the chatelaine of Glenlitten, seemed indeed to be a part of its exceeding charm, unportentous of the gathering storm. Yet there was about it, an hour or so later, a suggestion of recent haste: a tangle of exquisite silks and lingerie lay in disorder upon a deep armchair, with one daintily shaped silk stocking hanging over the arm. Upon the dressing table were scattered a variety of jewels–a diamond necklace whose gems sparkled brilliantly even in the dim rose-tinted illumination of the shaded light which stood by the bedside, a medley of rings with great lustrous stones, lying here and there as though they had been torn from the fingers with the same passionate haste as the little filmy wilderness of zephyrlike clothing from the body. The single bed, with its gilt posts and Cupids, lay cool and empty, the pink sheets turned down, the lace-edged pillow invitingly soft and luxurious. Even the Watteau shepherdesses upon the silk-panelled walls seemed to have paused in their gambollings to wonder at the silence. The curtains from one of the latticed windows had been drawn back, and outside in the park the trees stood stiff and stark in the moonlight, as yet too faint and fitful to do more than give their outline. From somewhere far away came the distant mutterings of a passing storm. An angry peacock shrieked from the terrace; an owl in one of the belted spinneys indulged now and then in his melancholy call. The faint rhythm of dance music stole up the great stairs from the hall below, with occasionally the shuffling of moving feet, a trill of laughter, the clapping of hands, and from down the long stretch of corridor came the sounds of muffled movements as the maids and valets passed in and out of the rooms they were preparing for the night. All this background of outside sounds seemed somehow to intensify the breathless stillness of this empty chamber. There was something delicately Oriental about its deserted charm, as though the fairy princess of some fairy monarch had passed through in haste to her lord’s apartments. Another rumble of distant thunder, now almost negligible, a livelier tune from below, a queer little padding sound in the gardens. Then the sanctified silence of the room itself was broken. Very slowly the inner door near the window was pushed open. Félice stole softly in, and with the same noiselessness closed the door behind her. She was clad in a peignoir of pale silk trimmed with fur, and for the mistress of a great house, the bearer of a great name, she seemed very small, even pathetic: her luminous eyes were dilated, as though in the throes of some terrible fear, yet still, like lamps of fire. Inside the room she paused and stood shivering with fright, looking tremulously around. Its silence, however, and the sound of the music from downstairs brought her a shade of reassurance. She moved uncertainly towards the bedside, turned down the sheets a little lower, and, without removing her peignoir, slipped between them. The music, with its message of reassurance, grew louder. She closed her eyes after one more half-terrified glance around. Her breathing became more regular. Her small white hand stole out and touched the switch of the lamp by her bedside. She seemed to breathe in the darkness joyfully.

Perhaps she dozed–she was never sure. Suddenly, however, she opened her eyes with a strange sensation of terror. A breath of air had stolen into the room, a hand, barely visible, moved the fastening, and the window stood wide open. The hand lingered upon the shelf. She stared at it fascinated. Her own fingers, which had crept out towards the switch, paused as though paralysed. She heard the sound of her name called breathlessly from behind the inner door which led to her bathroom.

“Lady Glenlitten!”

She was powerless to reply. There seemed to be some vague movement of that cumbrous form which obscured the night, and suddenly through the window she looked into a pair of eyes. She heard the chink of jewels. Some one was bending over her dressing table. The door of her sitting room was swung open. The white shirt front of a man gleamed in the darkness. She made one more effort. This time her fingers reached the switch, but they pressed it in vain. A sudden darkness seemed to have fallen upon the whole world. The reflection of the lights from other parts of the house was suddenly dimmed.

Against the background of exclamations from the corridors and halls below came other and more terrible sounds close at hand–a flash of yellow fire across the room, a sharp report, a groan, and the sound of a heavy fall. That was all the little Marchioness knew of what took place in those few seconds, for when they found her she was lying across the bed unconscious.

Throughout the great house, after the first shock of surprise at this sudden blanket of darkness, there was a certain amount of half-amused commotion. Servants came hurrying from their quarters with lamps and candles of every description. Upstairs there were the mingled sounds of scuffling, laughter, and subdued chaff, and in course of time little tongues of light appeared upon the landings and in most of the rooms. The library where Andrew Glenlitten had been playing bridge, with his sister, Major Fraser and Grindells, was perhaps the best served for illumination, owing to its considerable collection of inherited Georgian candlesticks, but Glenlitten excused himself temporarily from continuing the game. He summoned Sir Richard, who was reading the Times before the fire.

“Come and take my place, Dick,” he begged. “I must go and see if Félice is scared to death.”

Sir Richard folded up the Times, rose to his feet, and strolled across the room. Glenlitten, pausing to exchange a few remarks with the younger crowd who had recommenced dancing, mounted the great stairs, carrying a candle in his hand. On the first corridor he met a perturbed lady’s maid.

“Have you been in to see her ladyship, Annette?” he enquired.

The woman answered him in rapid French.

“Milord, I cannot enter. The door is locked.”

“Ridiculous!” he answered brusquely. “It has never been locked since we have been here.”

He passed swiftly on into his own apartments and turned the handle of the connecting door between his dressing room and his wife’s bedroom. To his surprise, he found that the maid was right; it was certainly locked. He knocked on the panels, softly at first, and then louder. There was no reply. “Félice!” he called out. “Félice!”

“Milady!” Annette cried, shaking the handle of the other door.

Still no reply. Glenlitten, by this time genuinely alarmed, hastened down the corridor, made his way along a short passage, and tried the handle of another door. To his relief it opened. He passed into a large and very beautiful bathroom, now in darkness, but still faintly impregnated with the odours and perfumes of feminine use–the odours of bath salts, flower-distilled waters, and scented soaps. He hurried through the adjoining sitting room, and, scarcely pausing to knock at the inner door, turned the handle with a prayer in his heart. Holding the candle high above his head, he entered his wife’s apartment. A step across the threshold, and the heavy candlestick nearly slipped from his shaking fingers. He stopped with a little gasp–a strong man sick with shock. Lying only a few feet away, with an ominous patch of red staining his white shirt, lay the man whom since the threatened storm every one had been missing–the Comte de Besset, the famous French polo player, golfer and reputed millionaire. And across the bed, as white and still as death itself, Félice!

CHAPTER III

There are seconds, even minutes, in one’s life which one loses forever. Andrew Glenlitten was never able to remember crossing the room or setting down the candlestick, as he must have done, with steady fingers by the side of the bed. He remembered only his first convulsive clasp of that still, inanimate form, his low cry of passion as he folded his arms around her. Of the dead man lying behind, he took no note. It was like a minor incident which had passed from his apprehension.

“Félice, you aren’t hurt, dear? Open your eyes! Félice!”

She gave a little moan, and a great relief swept into his heart. He heard the maid sobbing to herself behind him, and he spoke to her without turning his head.

“Get down below as quickly as you can,” he ordered. “Fetch Doctor Meadows and Sir Richard Cotton. Don’t make any mistake, mind. The doctor and Sir Richard.”

“I cannot pass,” the woman half sobbed, half shrieked. “Upon the carpet there! It is Monsieur le Comte. He is dead. There has been a crime!”

Glenlitten turned fiercely around, seized her by the shoulders and half pushed, half carried her to the corridor door. He unlocked it and thrust her out into the candle-lit gloom… .

“Do as you are told,” he insisted sternly. “The doctor–he is about somewhere–and Sir Richard is playing bridge in the library. Say nothing to any one else. Don’t let any one else come up.”

Back to the room. It seemed to him that Félice had stirred slightly. He kissed her eyes and her lips, and he felt a warm breath come faintly out. Suddenly she moved a little and raised one arm, which found its trembling way round his neck.

“Félice, my love!” he murmured. “Lie still. Soon you will be better.”

She moaned once more, but this time there seemed to be something more of relief than pain in the strangled murmur. He held her tightly until he was conscious of approaching footsteps, and the two men entered the room. He turned around.

“This way, Meadows,” he cried. “Quick!”

He disengaged himself gently from her arms, which, feeble though their strength was, seemed to cling. The doctor took his place. Glenlitten looked on anxiously during his brief examination.

“Ring for hot water, sal volatile, or brandy,” the doctor enjoined. “She’ll be all right presently.”

Glenlitten touched the bell. Annette, recovered, was already at hand. The news was spreading.

“Keep every one out of the room,” the doctor insisted. “Give her another five or ten minutes.”

“There’s no wound, or hurt of any sort?” Glenlitten asked.

“Nothing at all,” the doctor replied reassuringly. “Shock–nothing but shock. She’ll do all right now. Let me pass, please.”

Glenlitten stood reluctantly on one side. In those few moments the greater tragedy scarcely existed for him. It was only when he saw the gentle rise and fall of Félice’s bosom, watched the colour stealing back to her cheeks, that he turned around and joined the doctor and Sir Richard.

“De Besset!” he muttered, as he looked down at the body of the dead man. “In here! How on earth?”

As swiftly as the vague horror had rushed into his brain, he rejected it. Whatever had happened, it was not that.

“It seems useless to guess at what has happened,” Sir Richard pronounced, “until Lady Glenlitten can tell what she knows. So far as one can see, either De Besset has shot himself, or been shot by some one else. We had better telephone for the police. We can’t do anything more until Meadows has made his examination.”

Glenlitten nodded. His brain was still cloudy, but dimly he was beginning to remember. He made his way stealthily back to the communicating door between his own and his wife’s bedroom, turned the key softly, with a backward glance at Sir Richard, did the same thing to the other door, and gave orders to his own servant whom he found standing with a little throng around the banisters.

“Clear all these people away, Brooks,” he instructed, “and don’t let any one else come upstairs for the present. No one is to enter these rooms. Try to keep the servants as quiet as you can, and telephone at once to the police station, and ask the sergeant to come up.”

“Very good, my lord.”

“What happened to the lights? Has any one found out yet?”

“The cable seems to have been cut, my lord–wilfully cut,” Brooks confided, as he hurried off. “I have sent down to the engineer’s shop for some one to come up and see what they can do.”

“The cable cut from outside.” The words seemed to contain little of significance to Glenlitten’s numb brain, and yet in a way they were a relief. The tragedy had spread farther, at any rate, than those four walls. He made his way back to Félice’s bedroom and, pausing by the side of the dead man, looked down at him thoughtfully. He remembered with a little pang that he had been rather inclined to dislike him at Deauville, when Félice had first shyly introduced him, had found his manners too elegant, his speech too stilted, his attentions to Félice a trifle too eager, his talk about women a little too loose and free. These things lay far away now, however. His only feeling was one of great pity. De Besset had loved life so much, had been so gay upon his arrival, so happy at the prospect of joining in the English sport. Less than an hour ago he had been dancing– and now he lay there crumpled up, dead, shot, murdered. By whom? A wave of insurgent horror swept once more into Glenlitten’s brain. A tragedy like this in the bedroom of his wife! He was a proud man, and for the first time there was something personal in his horror. He looked towards the bed. Félice was sitting up, and the doctor beckoned to him.

“Sit by her side,” he whispered, “but don’t ask her any questions yet.”

He took the doctor’s place. Her arms slipped round his neck. He sank upon his knees by the side of the bed. He smoothed her hands, raised them to his lips and kissed them, but kept silent. Then, for the first time, she spoke. She pointed feebly towards Sir Richard, who had been opening and closing the doors of the wardrobes and was now leaning out of the wide-flung window.

“Please send him away,” she faltered. “I do not want any one else in the room. The doctor may stop, but not–not Sir Richard Cotton.”

He kissed her forehead.

“There is a reason,” he assured her, “why Sir Richard had better stay for a little time.”

She turned her head away. It was almost a child’s attitude of pouting. The doctor took her wrist between his thumb and fingers, and Glenlitten rose to his feet. Sir Richard was standing in the corner by the window, with his back to the wall, studying the room as though he wished every detail of it photographed in his memory.

“What sort of a man is your local police sergeant?” he asked, in a low tone.

“Fairly intelligent, I think.”

“There is no doubt,” Sir Richard pointed out, “that an entry has been made to the room by this window from below.”

“An entry through the window?” Glenlitten gasped. “But why?”

“Your wife’s jewels, of course,” Sir Richard answered, a little impatiently. “What else do you suppose? Where are they?”

“Damn the jewels! I don’t know. Her maid would see that those were put away, I expect.”

Sir Richard shook his head. He patted his host’s shoulder.

“Andrew,” he said, “you must pull yourself together. Her ladyship is recovering from her faint. The doctor has no anxiety about her at all. Listen. There has been a murder or a suicide committed here, and we must do our best to get to the bottom of it. Let us go into your bedroom and send for your wife’s maid. She will be able to tell us where she put the jewels when she undressed her mistress. Remember, your wife was wearing the famous diamonds.”

Glenlitten cast one longing look towards the bed. The doctor waved him away, but this time with a smile and a nod of reassurance.

“You’ll be able to talk to your wife in five minutes,” he promised. “I just want her to have a spoonful more brandy and then close her eyes.”

The two men tiptoed their way to Glenlitten’s bedroom and closed the door. In response to Sir Richard’s order, Brooks, who was waiting outside, hurried away to fetch the maid. He returned with her almost at once.

“Can I go to her ladyship, milord?” Annette begged.

“Not just yet,” Sir Richard insisted. “Tell me, will you, where are her ladyship’s jewels kept?”

“In the safe, monsieur. It is let into the wall,” the woman explained. “Milord can open it from his side, or milady from hers.”

“Stop, I don’t quite follow her,” Sir Richard interrupted. “My French is rotten. What does she say, Glenlitten?”

“We have a safe,” the latter explained, “built with double doors, one in her room, and one in mine, so that either of us can open it. There it is, you see.”

“Ask her if she put the jewels there when she undressed her ladyship to- night?”

Glenlitten framed the question. The girl looked at him, her black eyes round with wonder.

“But to-night,” she explained, “I did not undress her ladyship at all. I have not seen her jewels. She sent word that she did not wish for my attendance. I was dancing in the servants’ hall, and milady desired me to remain there.”

“I didn’t notice any jewels lying about in the room,” Sir Richard remarked, “but I watched your wife coming downstairs. Surely she was wearing Queen Charlotte’s necklace.”

Glenlitten nodded.

“Yes, I think she was,” he assented carelessly. “She may have put them away herself. I’ll get my key and see presently.”

“Does her ladyship often undress herself?” Sir Richard persisted, in stumbling French.

“Mais jamais, Monsieur,” the maid replied? “Never, never, never! J’étais même étonnée, mais milady a insisté.”

They made their way back to the bedroom. Félice smiled at them both when they entered. Then her husband thought no more about the jewels. He hurried over to her side. Once more her arms went round his neck and her head rested upon his shoulder.

“Andrew,” she murmured, “I have been so frightened–so terrified. There was shooting–here, in this room. And the lights all went out. Who is it that is hurt?”

“You shall hear everything presently, dear,” he assured her. “You and I are not hurt, at any rate, or any one we care much about. Let us be selfish, dear, until you are a little stronger.”

She clung to him convulsively. Suddenly the newly arrived colour began to fade from her cheeks. Behind her husband she saw Sir Richard standing gravely in the background.

“May I ask one question?” the latter begged. Her arms tightened round Glenlitten’s neck until they seemed as though they would choke him.

“Andrew,” she pleaded, “I cannot think. Send him away.”

“Oh, damn the necklace!” Glenlitten muttered, turning angrily around. “Can’t you see, Dick, Félice is not fit to be questioned.”

“The necklace,” she repeated. “It is on the dressing table with my rings and bracelets. I took everything off quickly. I was frightened. My head ached, and I was in a hurry to get into bed.”

Sir Richard turned away without further speech. Outside there were voices in the corridor, and a heavy footfall. The doctor leaned over the bed.

“That is probably the sergeant outside,” he announced. “He will have to come in and make his examination. Why not take your wife into your room?”

“Sure it won’t hurt her?” Andrew asked anxiously.