CHAPTER XII.
The following was the day of the inquest. It was to be held at the Abbey itself, and Mrs. Bean had swept the drawing-room, and uncovered the furniture in that dismal and damp apartment, so that the coroner and jury might hold their deliberation there. Freda, who followed the housekeeper about like her shadow, without acknowledging that it was because a horror had grown upon her of being left alone in that dreary old house, was helping to dust the old-fashioned ornaments.
“Mrs. Bean,” she said at last, stopping in the act of dusting the glass shade over an alabaster urn, in order to clap her hands together to warm them, “aren’t you going to light a fire here?”
“Yes, I will presently,” answered the housekeeper, whose lips and nose and hands were purple and stiff with cold.
“It will take a long time to warm this great room, won’t it?”
“Oh, the fire will soon burn up when it’s once lighted.”
However, it didn’t get lighted at all until half an hour before the coroner and jurymen arrived; and when Mrs. Bean did remember it, she put in the grate a small handful of newspaper and a few damp sticks which gave forth smoke instead of heat, and after hissing and spluttering for some minutes, finally gave up the task of burning altogether.
Freda stood by the kitchen fire, trying to puzzle out the meaning of these strange actions, while Mrs. Bean went out into the court-yard at the summons of the gate-bell. When the housekeeper returned, she met a gaze from the young girl’s eyes which made her feel uneasy.
“Are they all come?” asked Freda.
“Yes, the coroner and all of them. They’re in the drawing-room now.”
“What are they doing now?”
“First, the coroner will charge them; then the witnesses will be examined——”
“What witnesses?” asked Freda quickly.
“Why, Crispin and I.”
“Crispin will be examined?”
“Yes,” said Nell sharply, “and so will you, if you don’t keep out of the way. You’d better go upstairs to your room till they’re out of the house. They won’t be more than an hour, I should think, at the outside. I’ll come up and tell you when they’re gone.”
So the girl went slowly out of the room, and across the hall, where she could hear the deliberate tones of the coroner charging the jury, and upstairs. But on the landing she stopped, and peeping about to see that she was not watched, she tried the door of her father’s room, found that it was locked, and dropping softly on her knees, looked through the key-hole. The bed was opposite to the door.
The body was no longer there.
Freda sprang up from her knees with a white face, ran through the picture-gallery, and shut herself up in her own room. She knew very well that a dead body was not easily moved; half-an-hour ago she had seen it lying on the bed; Mrs. Bean had not been upstairs since; if Crispin was about the house still, could he move such a weight by himself, and carry it down the stairs and out of the house without her having heard or seen him? She sat on a chair near her window, with her head between her hands, trying to puzzle out the meaning of these strange occurrences, until the thought came into her mind that she might perhaps be able, by secreting herself somewhere on the landing outside her father’s room, to see the jurymen come up on their investigations, and to hear what they said. So she came softly out of the room, and through the picture-gallery, and out on to the wide landing.
The most desolate spot in the whole house this had always appeared to Freda. As large as a good-sized room, panelled from oaken floor to moulded ceiling with a raised recess by the mullioned window, this might have been made a comfortable as well as handsome corner, while now it was left to the dust and the rats. So thick was the dust on the boards that two paths might be traced in it, the one leading to Captain Mulgrave’s room, the other to the door of the picture-gallery. Except on these two tracks the dust lay thick, showing the state of neglect into which the old house had fallen. Freda had often been struck by this, and had even resolved to steal a broom from Mrs. Bean’s quarters, and make up herself for the housekeeper’s lack either of time or of care.
As her glance wandered over the floor as usual this morning, Freda, therefore, noticed at once that there was a little difference in its appearance. From her father’s door there was a semi-circular sweep in the dust towards a little recess on the other side of the head of the staircase. It looked as if something about two feet wide had been dragged along the floor. With a loudly beating heart, Freda followed this track, and reaching the recess, found it to be deeper than she thought, and quite dark; venturing into it, she found that the boards rattled under her feet.
At that moment she heard a door open downstairs, and the hum of several voices, followed by the sound of men’s footsteps crossing the hall and ascending the staircase. The coroner and jurymen! She could hear some of the remarks they made to each other in low tones as they came up the stairs, and she found out, by hearing several questions addressed to Crispin, that he was among them. She caught fragments of a good many questions asked about the Captain’s habits and the exact position in which the body had been found lying; she heard complaints of the cold and an inquiry why the body had been taken out of the room. Crispin’s answers were all given in such a low voice that she could not catch a word of them, but she made out that they satisfied his interrogators. This part of the business occupied only a very few minutes, and then they all tramped out and went downstairs again, the one subject which seemed chiefly to occupy the thoughts of all being the cold, the bitter cold. Their teeth seemed to chatter as they talked. Freda, venturing out of her hiding-place, and passing again over the rattling boards, leaned over the balustrade at the head of the staircase, and saw Mrs. Bean talking in a respectful manner to the coroner. He was complaining of having to go out in the snow to the out-house to view the body.
“Indeed, sir,” said the housekeeper, who seemed to Freda to be very nervous and excited, “I am very sorry that I had my poor master’s body moved at all; Crispin and I thought it would be more convenient for you, for my poor master’s room is, as you saw, so dreadfully crowded up with his furniture and things.”
“Oh,” returned the coroner, “I’m not blaming you. Of course you did it for the best. We have the doctor’s certificate, the viewing the body is merely formal, it will only take a few moments.”
He left her and went out by the front door, following the last two jurymen. Freda could not see the door from where she stood, but she heard it close; and she saw the housekeeper, as soon as she was left quite alone, burst into tears and wring her hands desperately.
“It will be found out, it will be found out!” she moaned.
And still sobbing and drying her eyes upon her apron, Mrs. Bean hurried back to her own quarters.
Freda’s first impulse was to run after her; but recollecting that the housekeeper was now more likely than ever to be reticent, she refrained, and remaining where she was, awaited the return of the coroner and jurymen in a state of the wildest excitement.
At last she heard the distant sound of voices, and then she heard Mrs. Bean set ajar the kitchen door to listen. Louder and nearer the voices came, and then the foremost man opened the front door and tramped in, followed by the rest.
What had happened? Nothing, apparently, for again the uppermost thought with the men was the intense cold. They were clapping their hands, blowing on their fingers, stamping their feet.
“Like an icehouse, that place!” muttered one.
“They could keep the body there all the winter!” said another.
“Ah couldn’t hardly feel ma feet!” added a third.
In the meantime the housekeeper had come out, and greeted them with outward composure, which astonished Freda and excited her admiration.
“Well, gentlemen, and the verdict I suppose is——”
Somebody interrupted her.
“Hush, hush, my good woman. We haven’t got so far as that yet. You shall hear all in good time.”
The housekeeper apologised, and the coroner and jurymen returned to the drawing-room. In a very few minutes they issued forth again, drawing their mufflers more closely round their necks, and putting on their hats.
Verdict? Oh, yes, the verdict. It was: That the deceased died from the effects of a gunshot wound; but by whose hand the weapon was discharged there was no evidence to show.
Mrs. Bean ushered them out with a decently grave and sad visage. But when she re-entered the house from the court-yard she was singing like a lark.
Freda was puzzled. Back to the recess she went, and feeling with her feet and her crutch very carefully, she soon touched the rattling boards. Then she dropped upon her knees, lit her candle and passed her hand over the floor. Two of the boards were loose, she found, and looking round for something with which to try to raise them, she saw a flattened iron bar lying close under the wall. Suspecting that this had been used previously for the same purpose, she proceeded to raise one of the boards with it. This task easily accomplished, she shifted the board so as to be able to see underneath it.
Extending to a depth of four feet below the surface of the floor, was one of those mysterious enclosures between the ceiling of one room and the floor of the one above, which so often exists in very old houses to testify to forgotten dangers of persecution and pursuit. It was dark, close, musty. Freda bent lower and lower, her eyes fixed in horror on an object at the bottom. Something long, swathed in white: the body of a dead man.
Freda had begun this search full of suspicion; but the shock was almost as great as if she had been entirely unprepared for the discovery of this ghastly secret. She did not scream, although after the first shock she put her hands before her mouth in the belief that she had done so. She felt benumbed, stunned. Who was it? She must look, she must find out, if the discovery killed her. With trembling hands she picked up her candle, which had fallen and gone out, and relighting it, peered down at the dead face.
For the first moment she did not recognise it, or death had refined the coarse outline and effaced the sinister expression. Presently, however, came full recollection. It was the dead face of the servant Blewitt.