Chapter XXVI
I cannot quite decide whether it was the preparations and natural excitement consequent on my marriage, or whether much success had made me careless, but certain it was that I conducted my campaign against Lord Gascoyne, the most delicate affair of all, with a lack of forethought which candour compels me to admit has very justly brought me to this place.
I believe it would have been better if I had dealt with him some time before. Now I come to think the matter over, it would obviously have been better to leave the Reverend Henry alive, and to have waited my opportunity in the case of Lord Hammerton. I should then have appeared so much further from the succession that suspicion would not have been aroused.
In the first place, I was much too hasty in deciding on the means by which I intended to remove Lord Gascoyne. To have decided on vulgar, common-place poison at such a crisis was an error in judgment for which there is really no excuse.
Miss Gascoyne and I were to spend a few days at Hammerton at the conclusion of our honeymoon, and I chose that occasion for the completion of my task. It would then be practically finished, for I had no intention of getting rid of Mr. Gascoyne. A natural feeling of gratitude towards so excellent a man was my first objection, and I did not think there would be any necessity. I should not, I imagined, have long to wait, and a few years in the position of heir would be by no means unpleasant.
I was obliged to ask Lionel and Sibella to my wedding, but Sibella, I was glad to find, had not the least intention of being present. She made herself perfectly ill about it, and my one prayer was that she might not become hysterical. Women in a state of hysteria do such extraordinary things.
We were married somewhat quietly, considering all things. I don’t think my wife ever looked more beautiful. Hers was too deep a nature not to take so serious a thing as marriage somewhat sadly. The service, to my mind, was a little cold. My taste for ritual was Oriental, and I could have wished that my wife-elect had belonged to the Roman communion in order that there might have been more splendour. I should have been quite prepared to become a nominal child of Rome had it been necessary.
We spent our somewhat short honeymoon at a place called the Green Manor, a small country-house belonging to Lord and Lady Gascoyne, a fact which quite placed us as a married couple.
I had manœuvred so that our honeymoon should be a short one, giving as a plea that Mr. Gascoyne’s health was far from good, and that I did not care to neglect the business. My wife at once fell in with the idea. The truth of the matter was that I was anxious for our visit to Hammerton to take place as soon as possible. With my marriage, however, there came a new terror into my life. I was full of fear that I might say something in my sleep which might give a clue to my secret. A chance word might do it. Still, it was a risk I was obliged to take. If I had been in love with my wife to a certain extent before marriage, I cannot say that my passion lasted very long. I fancy she brought to what I had always looked upon as a delirious relaxation too strenuous an ideal. With her it could not have been otherwise. I managed to conceal the fact from her with considerable success, but the truth was that she got on my nerves. She was a great creature, but she was on a different plane from myself, and it made things very difficult. A good woman, however, being without experience, is always more easily deceived. If this were not so the artificial arrangements which are supposed to safeguard society would have disappeared long ago.
The life she was always sketching out for us, to her so beautiful and noble, was to me excessively dreary. Doing good appeared to be its chief entertainment. We were apparently to spend our money—all too little for the wants of a young couple who wished to make a decent figure in society—on other people. I foresaw a very speedy parting of our ways. I was strong, and she was strong, and it was impossible that either should impose views on the other. She was one of those women who are perfectly prepared to follow love to heaven, but who have not the least intention of being led in the contrary direction. Conscience with her was supreme. I was determined, however, that nothing should appear at all wrong during Mr. Gascoyne’s lifetime, or until I was in safe possession of Hammerton and the title. Mr. Gascoyne’s fortune amounted to close on a hundred thousand pounds. This would, I knew, come to my wife and myself, and if I suffered defeat, it would be a very pleasant addition to our own capital; and though I did not think that, except in extreme circumstances, Mr. Gascoyne was likely to leave his money away from us, it was possible that if he had an idea that I was not making quite the husband he expected he might settle it somewhat too exclusively on Edith.
I set myself, therefore, to study the art of concealing from her that her ideals bored me, and that her outlook on life was too serious. At the same time I bantered her a little, and tried to bring her into an atmosphere of gaiety. She was ready to attempt a greater levity of manner to please me. The effort was somewhat of a failure, for saints off their pedestals never present an absolutely dignified appearance.
Our honeymoon was a success, however. A man of taste and imagination can never be quite dull when in possession of a beautiful woman, not, at any rate, until the novelty has worn off. Serious though Edith was, she did not exhaust herself in a fortnight.
We arrived at Hammerton in due course, to find Mr. and Mrs. Gascoyne of the party. The reception that Lord and Lady Gascoyne gave us was quite feudal and eminently flattering. I inwardly promised his lordship that if it were in my power he should have a magnificent funeral.
It was quite a family gathering. Naturally, we had not expected many people to be asked to meet us, as they were still in deep mourning. It had been very nice of them to ask us at all, considering the circumstances. I had grown so accustomed to pose as one of the mourners at a tragedy of my own making that the situation had ceased even to possess weirdness.
It was a little awkward that my wife took an immediate fancy to Esther Lane. It was surely against all the laws of human nature that Esther Lane should reciprocate the liking.
It seemed to me that from the moment she met my wife her whole manner towards me changed.
I think she began instinctively to distrust a man who could behave so badly—from her point of view—to a woman like Edith. I don’t think she entirely believed all I had said about my marriage being one of mere convenience. Before I had had an opportunity of seeing her alone, in the course of a few remarks which we hurriedly interchanged while we were looking over some songs after dinner, she told me that she could not understand any man not loving a woman so beautiful and good. I could see that without saying as much she was a little surprised that Edith and I should have come together. She had a fine instinct and perhaps realised how unsuited we must be.
I was anxious to have a private conversation with her, but she declared that it was quite impossible, that she was not so depraved as I imagined her to be.
When I did manage to get a few words with her alone I found that she was adamant. It was certain that she had changed to an extraordinary degree, and somehow she gave me an uncomfortable and somewhat sinister impression of being a possible danger. She did not deny that she still loved me a great deal too much for her own peace of mind, and I have no doubt that if I had had a free hand as to the time I could spend with her I might have had my own way, but I was occupied with other things, and in particular I was occupied with Lord Gascoyne.
I had decided that after dinner, whilst Lord Gascoyne and I were sitting over our wine I would try, if possible, to carry out the finishing stroke of my policy.
Evening after evening I sat within arm’s length of him without the desired opportunity occurring.
Lord Gascoyne was in the habit of drinking claret after dinner. His cellar of this wine was quite remarkable. He was, however, a moderate drinker, and I do not think that beyond a couple of glasses after dinner he ever took anything at all. Sometimes he drank whisky-and-soda in the smoking-room, but very rarely. Indeed, we were a most abstemious couple.
It was towards the end of my visit when the opportunity occurred. One evening as we were sitting over our wine a servant came in and announced that there was a fellow-magistrate in the justice-room who wished to see him, if only for two minutes.
He left the room, saying that he would not be long, and with the usual conventional admonition to help myself. Now was my chance. My courage failed me for a few minutes, and then I made the greatest mistake I could have done. His glass was empty, and so I poisoned what remained in the bottle. As I had the bottle in my hand a servant entered in search of Lord Gascoyne’s eyeglasses. He saw me with the bottle in my hand, and noticing that my glass was empty, and knowing I drank port, filled it. As I was wondering what I should do, Lord Gascoyne re-entered and seated himself.
I gazed at the bottle before him, fascinated. I would have given worlds to get rid of it. Just as I was thinking of doing something to upset it, he poured out a glass and began to drink it. I saw at once the whole chain of mistakes. I was the only person in the room. I had been seen with the bottle in my hand. It would be next to impossible to destroy the bottle with its damning evidence. I had also obtained the arsenic from a chemist in the ordinary way. I had signed the wrong name, and if I were recognised that would make the matter worse. I had every motive for the crime—a motive which would stand out with startling clearness after Lord Gascoyne’s death. I had felt nervous before. Now I experienced a sensation of acute terror. I must have shown it to some extent, for I turned pale, and Lord Gascoyne asked me whether I was ill. I declared I felt quite well, although at the moment he was taking another glass of claret.
I realised with an extraordinary feeling of depression that I was a clumsy murderer walking about like any ordinary criminal with blood-red hands, and trusting that nobody would notice their colour.
I watched Lord Gascoyne drinking his claret with sinking spirits, and could only pray that he might be one of those people who possess an inexplicable immunity to the poison I had used. It was not our custom to remain long over our wine, and in about a quarter of an hour we joined the three women in a small octagonal room off the picture-gallery. As Lord Gascoyne and I walked along the dimly-lighted picture-gallery towards the little room at the end I felt as if I were in a dream. It seemed as if the presage of a Nemesis, tardy but terrible, were upon me. The dark figures on the canvas stared down upon him as he passed, claiming him as one of their ghostly company; and I almost thought that his own picture, high above the great mantelpiece carved in hundreds of twisted forms by Grinling Gibbons, shivered as he walked below it. I expected every moment a cry of pain or the first moan of faintness. I had to pull myself together, and by the time we reached the others I had regained complete control. Lord Gascoyne always drank tea instead of coffee after dinner, and on occasions like this there were no servants, and it was made in a delightfully informal way by Esther Lane. She asked me to carry Lord Gascoyne’s cup to him, which I did and he took it from me with murmured thanks.
I must still have shown traces of my recent agitation, for my wife drew the attention of the others to my pallor. She had hardly done so when Lord Gascoyne’s cup fell with a crash to the ground, and he sank back into his chair in a dead faint.
The others went towards him at once, as I did also after the first moment.
Lady Gascoyne said something about brandy, and Esther hurried from the room to obtain it. Lord Gascoyne had somewhat recovered by the time she returned, but very shortly relapsed into another faint. I saw that my purpose was accomplished, and that before morning only Mr. Gascoyne would stand between myself and all I coveted. Lord Gascoyne retired in indescribable pain to his bedroom, and a groom was despatched for the doctor. As for myself, I hurried to the dining-room in the hope of being able to do away with the decanter of claret containing the evidence of guilt. If the decanter were discovered, I should immediately fall under suspicion. It could not be otherwise. Well, I must be as calm as possible. On entering the dining-room I saw at once that the decanter had been removed. My opportunity of destroying all chance of detection was over. In reality it was here that I made the fatal mistake, for I should have obtained possession of the decanter at all costs and destroyed it, or at least have cleansed it. I should have invented some excuse, seeing its paramount importance to me. I was, however, too nervous of arousing suspicion. In fact, I had lost my nerve for the time being without realising it. It is certain that had I been as cool and self-possessed as I am now I should not be here. I allowed the golden opportunity to slip. There was some excuse. Lord Gascoyne was momentarily growing worse. Everyone in the castle was in a state of alarm. I was seldom alone, for my wife hardly left me except when she could be of use. I cursed myself for my stupidity in not choosing a more rapid poison. I might at least have given the foolish doctors an opportunity of declaring death to be due to natural causes. The learned fellows require so little encouragement to commit blunders.
I remember well the electric shock I received when, towards the morning, one of the doctors stopped me in the corridor and said something about its looking very much as if Lord Gascoyne had been poisoned.
“Poisoned?” I asked in surprise.
“Yes; he must have eaten something which was poisoned. One never knows in these days of food adulteration. One is safe nowhere—not even at the best tables.”
I felt almost inclined to say that doctors themselves were curiously lax on the subject, but I was too much alarmed at his having put his finger on the spot at once to enter into an abstract discussion on the ethics of the medical profession.
I was drawing him out in order to see how much he had guessed, when his colleague came out of Lord Gascoyne’s apartment and called him in. Coming along the corridor I met Esther Lane, seeking for news. I went towards her. Was it my fancy, or did she shrink from me? It seemed to me that she did, but I was in a weak, morbid state of mind, in which I was a prey to fears of my own shadow. It was a dreary trio that met round the breakfast-table. Lady Gascoyne did not appear, and Esther always took her meals with her charge, except when she was specially asked by Lady Gascoyne to join herself and her friends.
One of the doctors came in, but brought only bad news. In answer to Mrs. Gascoyne’s inquiries he threw up his hands.
“We do not know what to make of it, and——”
He paused, as if afraid to go on.
“Please tell us,” said my wife anxiously.
“Well, of course, while there is life there is hope, but——”
“You don’t think——”
“I am afraid we must prepare for the worst.”
There was a long pause. The two women were horrified. I rose and went to the window, as I knew not what guilt my face might betray.
Suddenly the end came. A wail shivered down the corridors, and then, from where I was watching the bedroom door, I saw Lady Gascoyne led out by Edith. After a few minutes the two doctors came out, and in answer to my question, explained that all was over. I carried the news to Mrs. Gascoyne. She was terribly distressed, and asked me to wire for her husband, which of course I did. It suddenly struck me that it might be possible to obtain the decanter that evening at dinner. I supposed there would be dinner. There usually is, even at moments of the greatest stress. Curiously enough, the whole thing once over, I began to recover my nerve rapidly, and by the time Mr. Gascoyne had arrived I was quite myself. I did not know that, even at that moment, the junior doctor was conducting an examination into what Lord Gascoyne had eaten and drunk the evening before, and giving orders that everything which had been left was to remain untouched.
I think such a knowledge would have tempted me to buy some means of retiring from the scene on an emergency. I had not even a loaded revolver. It was evident I was not the clever person I had imagined myself to be.
Mr. Gascoyne could hardly believe the news.
“Israel, it is terrible. There seems to be a curse on the family.” He was silent for a few moments, and then continued thoughtfully: “Israel, has it struck you what this means to you? Failing male heirs, the title descends through a woman. Your grandfather would have been the last male heir, therefore your mother would have succeeded as his heiress, and then you.”
We had talked this over before, but I pretended to think of it deeply, as if it now presented itself to me seriously for the first time.
“Of course, it has struck me, but the possibilities seemed so remote.”
“They are close enough now. It would seem as if Fate had been on your side.”
I certainly hoped that it was. He little knew that that fate in its concrete form was sitting opposite to him.
“What do you think was the cause of death, Israel?”
“Nobody seems quite to know.”
“He looked just that sinewy, tough sort of man who was likely to live for ever.”
I was silent.
“There must have been something organically wrong,” Mr. Gascoyne continued.
I was still silent, meditating whether I should tell him what the doctor had hinted at as regards poison. I decided that it would be better to do so. It would look very strange if he should discover that the doctor had already suggested such a thing to me, and that I had ignored the fact.
“Dr. Phillimore thinks that death must have been caused by some violent poison.”
“Poison? Impossible!”
“So I said. I don’t suppose he meant for one moment that anybody had poisoned him.”
I regretted this remark. It might rouse suspicions in his brain. The nervous analysis of everything I said was becoming automatic.
“He was taken ill directly after dinner, you say?”
“When we left the dining-room.”
“If it had been anything he had eaten you would all have been taken ill as well.”
“It would seem so. At least, I don’t know. There may have been some dish which we others did not touch.”
“It is all very mysterious, but it is quite possible that the doctors may be wrong.”
“Oh, quite,” I said dryly.
The rest of the drive he spent in asking after Lady Gascoyne, and for other details of the affair.
As we entered the great hall I saw the two doctors at a distant window in earnest consultation.
They came forward and greeted Mr. Gascoyne as the Earl.
They had evidently been waiting for him. Dr. Phillimore, the younger of the two, who had been called in in consultation, said at once:
“Dr. Grange is anxious for a private interview with you when you are at liberty.”
I had from the first felt nervous of Dr. Phillimore. He was evidently a man of exceptional intellectual power. He had a massive, square forehead, and a strong resolute face with an expression of great alertness. Even now, although he had had no rest for twenty-four hours, he showed few traces of fatigue. Dr. Grange, on the other hand, looked worn and jaded to a degree, and would, I am sure, had he been left to himself, have retired to rest before taking any further steps in the matter. I did not know that, whilst I had been out, Dr. Phillimore had been making extensive inquiries, and that he had already placed under lock and key everything which had been on the table the night before.
It appeared that he had once before been concerned in a poisoning case. Decidedly my good fortune had been on the wane without my knowing it. I think his previous experience had somewhat obsessed him with the idea that poisoners were everywhere. Only in this way can I account for the unerring ability with which he followed up every clue.
I was beginning to feel more and more uncomfortable, and when Mr. Gascoyne and the two doctors disappeared into the library—I had not been invited to be present—I felt much like the criminal who in a moment of panic betrays his guilt by flight.
My wife came to me once or twice; but she was a great deal with Lady Gascoyne, or rather stayed just within call, for Lady Gascoyne was a proud woman, and preferred to suffer in solitude.
Whilst the consultation was proceeding in the library, I remained in the corridor outside, controlling my agitation with really wonderful success. As I stood in the dusk looking out through the open window, round which climbed June roses and clematis, Esther Lane stole up to me.
So ghostlike and silent had been her approach that I gave a cry as her eyes met mine. On further recollection, the sound I made was a smothered yell. It was a sound which now seems to me to have been full of a confession of guilt.
For a moment she did not even say she was sorry she had startled me. She was evidently too amazed at my display of nerves. I even think that a faintly defined ghost of suspicion floated through her mind. At any rate, the incident seemed to widen the gulf between us.
“This is terrible, is it not?” she said.
“It is terrible.”
“And but for me Lady Gascoyne would have had her child to console her.” She covered her face with her hands.
“I do not think you ought to put it like that,” I said gently.
“The doctors say he was poisoned. It is strange, is it not?”
“It is strange,” I answered.
The sunset hour, the knowledge that the three men in the library were hovering over an undetected crime, invested the situation with a deep gloom. The ghostlike figure of Esther at my side, from whom remorse and suffering had taken something of her bloom, seemed to me made for suffering. I felt that Fate had marked her out for some terrible experiment in sorrow; that grief had chosen her for its own, and that I ought to have foreseen it.
I had made the cardinal error of allying myself with a soul that was moving in a cycle of sorrows. It was curious that I should not have detected a fact now so apparent. One should always seek the companionship of the joyous. To walk with those who are wedded by Fate to grief is to play with fire. It is to step within influences that may destroy us. So much of the mystical I can infer. There is hidden meaning in the phrase, ‘Let the dead bury their dead.’ She seemed to be afraid of her own company, and I think sought mine out of pure loneliness. I was too absorbed, however, in my own danger to comfort her. What had she to fear compared to me? She had lost something which was of purely conventional value, whilst I might be in danger of losing the essentials, life and liberty.
“I am very unhappy,” she said, in her low, musical voice, with the curious thrilling vibration that had given it such an appeal for me. “I feel as if somehow I had meant nothing but sorrow and grief to this place, as if I were of ill omen. Of course, it is presumptuous of me to even think of myself as being of so much importance.”
“You seem to think very little of me now,” I murmured. It seemed unchivalrous not to render her some comfort of the heart.
She was silent for a moment, and then pulled herself together.
“I am afraid I think of you too much.”
Even at that moment I was moved in my essential sex vanity, and was prepared to play the lover if it were worth while.
“You have been very unkind lately, Esther.”
I touched her lightly with my hand. She drew away from me.
“I think you are wicked, and I know that what has been must be expiated. That is an inevitable law.”
I shivered. There was a stern intensity in her voice despite its music.
“Yes,” she continued, “I love you still, but I have no joy in doing so. If by dying I could make you better, I would willingly die, but I could never again——”
She broke off abruptly, but I knew what she had intended saying, and I also knew that she meant it.
She moved away, and left me peering out into the dark, mechanically trying to distinguish the features of the landscape as they became more and more blurred by the gathering dusk.
Finally, I heard the library door open behind me, but pretended not to have done so. I started with feigned surprise when Mr. Gascoyne touched me on the arm. The little piece of acting was quite unneeded, but it denoted the nervous necessity that I felt for dissimulation. One glance at his face, even in the dusk, reassured me that, so far, I was not in any way an object of suspicion.
“There will have to be an inquest, Israel. Phillimore is convinced that Gascoyne was poisoned. I think his insistence on the point rather annoys Dr. Grange.”
“I concluded that an inquest would be necessary. When is it to be held?”
“Phillimore has wired to London for a specialist in poisons, and the post-mortem will take place directly he arrives. It appears that Phillimore was mixed up in the Greybridge poisoning case, and knows a good deal about these things. Not,” he added hastily, “that there is the least suspicion of foul play.”
Phillimore was evidently a highly unpleasant fellow, and I would willingly have pushed him over the battlements if occasion had offered. I made myself very civil to him, however. I was told that he had gone into the kitchen and superintended the cooking of everything which was sent upstairs. This had the effect of frightening all the servants into fits, and half of them were already complaining of imaginary internal aches and pains.
I saw the humour of the situation, notwithstanding my alarm, but the others did not. They sat round the table with the conventional Christian look of gloom which is considered suitable when a brother Christian has, presumably, entered into a state of bliss.
After dinner I went and sat with my wife and Mrs. Gascoyne. They informed me that Lady Gascoyne, thoroughly worn out, had fallen asleep.
“I am afraid the most terrible moment of all for her will be when she wakes up to find that it is not a dream but a reality.”
Frankly, I thought worse sorrows might have befallen a woman with three-quarters of a million of her own, who still retained youth and beauty, not to speak of being a dowager Countess. No, it was impossible to feel very sorry for Lady Gascoyne. Nobody realises the tragedies of love better than I do, but at the same time one cannot forget that lovers for the beautiful and rich are to be found every hour of the day. She had bought a title and a lover once. She might conceivably do so again.
Of course, grief is always terrible, but the most terrible thing in the whole world is poverty. I do not deny that it may be a vice to attach the importance to wealth that I have done. I have never concealed from myself the fact that my mind is glamoured and decadent. Poverty, it is true, is comparative, but to have to endure that which is relative poverty is a slow torture which has no equal.
The conversation at the dinner-table had dwelt with a mournful decency on the probable cause of death.
“It must have been something in the food,” held Dr. Phillimore.
“If that is so, why is no one else ill?” And Dr. Grange looked as if he had effectually crushed his colleague.
“It may have been something of which the others did not partake. I have had all saucepans, cooking-utensils, food, dishes, and wine used last night isolated and locked away.”
I stared at him, petrified. It was the first time I had been brought face to face with the hard fact that the claret decanter would be thoroughly examined. I passed a gruesome ten minutes, but managed to maintain my composure and take my share of the conversation.
“Dr. Grange thinks the cause of death may be something quite different from poison,” explained Dr. Phillimore, turning to the rest of the company.
I think Mr. Gascoyne, whose instinct for character was not his strong point, also felt that Dr. Phillimore was somewhat premature in his conclusions, that, in fact, he was rather officious and inclined to treat us all like children. With my special knowledge I was, of course, able to appreciate his real value, though, even had I been a mere spectator, I think I should have set him down at a glance as a man of first-class brain-power.
The great specialist arrived whilst we were at dinner. He was a man of opulent, indeed quite princely demeanour. Unlike Phillimore, whose exterior bore a certain ruggedness, his power was concealed by an outward courtliness that might have deceived the unwary. Personally, I felt it at once.
He went into consultation with his brethren, and I learned afterwards that he speedily came to the opinion that Lord Gascoyne had died of a violent irritant poison.
All these details were kept from Lady Gascoyne as much as possible, and it was not till after the post-mortem that she learned what had taken place. I saw by the look of perplexity in the faces of the three doctors that they were puzzled at what they had found. I had already resigned myself to the fact that the poison would be found in the bottle of claret. The wretched thing, with other food which was to be examined, was locked up in a strong room, of which Dr. Grange held the key. Figuratively, I was before that strong room every precious hour that passed, wondering how it might be opened. How wretchedly I had overreached myself! However, it was done. It was of no use to whine. I must fight until the whole thing was decided against me.
The doctors were quite secret over what they had discovered, but I kept Dr. Phillimore well under observation. He left the house soon after the post-mortem, and drove off in the direction of Gaythorpe, a town about five miles away. I knew what he had done. He had written his telegram before leaving the house, and I read it on the blotting-paper by means of a looking-glass. It was as I thought. The message was a telegram to Scotland Yard asking for a detective. While he was doing this, the poison expert was examining the food.
I tramped the battlements for one hour making up my mind as to what I should do in case the charge should be made against me.
I did not make the mistake of dwelling on those points of the case which were in my favour. I kept my attention fixed on those that seemed most damning. My own guilt, viewing it as I did from the inside, seemed easily susceptible of proof, but I had to remember that a detective, however expert, would approach the matter from a totally different standpoint. He was, after all, an outsider, and I must try and put myself in his position if possible.
It took me a long time to decide my course of action should suspicion fall upon me. I also began to grow uneasy as to whether I had left anything in my house at Clapham which might furnish a clue to my movements during my former operations. I was sorry I had concealed the existence of the house.
If I were arrested the grief of Mr. Gascoyne and my wife would be rather trying, but I had counted the cost of discovery when I originally set out on my adventures.
Mr. Gascoyne was busily occupied in arranging for the funeral.
I was very anxious to discover whether there was any likelihood of a posthumous heir.
I noticed that Mr. Gascoyne did not so far permit himself to be addressed as the Earl.
The inquest was held the next day. The detective, I knew, had arrived the night before, and was making inquiries. In the morning he was standing in the hall as I passed towards the breakfast-room. I knew perfectly well he was waiting to see me, and the swift glance I took at his face convinced me that he was on the right track.
I felt a terrible shock, notwithstanding the fact that I had been steeling myself ever since Lord Gascoyne’s death to meet such a situation.
The specialist was the only occupant of the breakfast-room when I entered. I had not seen him or his brethren since early the evening before.
“Have you arrived at the cause of Lord Gascoyne’s death?” I asked.
“Poison,” he said shortly.
I started, as if immensely surprised.
“Then Dr. Phillimore was right. Something in the food, I suppose?”
He hesitated.
“We don’t quite know. We have not finished our investigation yet.”
This I knew was not true. The detective had evidently asked him, if his own discretion had not prompted him, to hold his tongue.
The specialist volunteered no more information, and in a few minutes my wife and Mrs. Gascoyne joined us.