“What did your uncle say?”
“He seemed rather annoyed, but went off at once. It was about five minutes later that I heard the sound of raised voices. I ran out into the hall, and almost collided with Mrs. Middleton. Then we heard the shot. The gun-room door was locked on the inside, and we had to go round the house to the window. Of course that took some time, and the murderer had been able to get well away. My poor uncle”—her voice faltered—“had been shot through the head. I saw at once that he was dead, and I sent Mrs. Middleton for the police straight away. I was careful to touch nothing in the room but to leave it exactly as I found it.”
I nodded approval.
“Now, as to the weapon?”
“Well, I can make a guess at it, Captain Hastings. A pair of revolvers of my husband’s were mounted upon the wall. One of them is missing. I pointed this out to the police, and they took the other one away with them. When they have extracted the bullet, I suppose they will know for certain.”
“May I go to the gun-room?”
“Certainly. The police have finished with it. But the body has been removed.”
She accompanied me to the scene of the crime. At that moment Havering entered the hall, and with a quick apology, his wife ran to him. I was left to undertake my investigations alone.
I may as well confess at once that they were rather disappointing. In detective-novels, clues abound, but here I could find nothing that struck me as out of the ordinary except a large bloodstain on the carpet where I judged the dead man had fallen. I examined everything with painstaking care and took a couple of pictures of the room with my little camera, which I had brought with me. I also examined the ground outside the window, but it appeared to have been so heavily trampled that I judged it was useless to waste time over it. Now I had seen all that Hunter’s Lodge had to show me. I must go back to Elmer’s Dale and get into touch with Japp. Accordingly I took leave of the Haverings, and was driven off in the car that had brought us up from the station.
Japp I found at the Matlock Arms, and he took me forthwith to see the body. Harrington Pace was a small, spare, cleanshaven man, typically American in appearance. He had been shot through the back of the head, and the revolver had been discharged at close quarters.