In the chair behind this, which was turned a little away from the table, sat, or rather reclined, the body of Mr. Stanworth. His right hand, which was dangling by his side almost to the floor, was tightly clenched about a small revolver, the finger still convulsively clasping the trigger. In the centre of his forehead, just at the base of his hair, was a little circular hole, the edges of which looked strangely blackened. His head lolled indolently over the top of the chair-back, and his wide-open eyes were staring glassily at the ceiling.
It was, as Jefferson had said, not a pretty sight.
Roger was the first to break the silence. “Well, I’m damned!” he said softly. “What on earth did he want to go and do that for?”
“Why does anyone do it?” asked Jefferson, staring at the still figure as if trying to read its secret. “Because he has some damned good reason of his own, I suppose.”
Roger shrugged his shoulders a little impatiently. “No doubt. But old Stanworth of all people! I shouldn’t have thought that he’d got a care in the world. Not that I knew him particularly well, of course; but I was only saying to you yesterday, Alec——” He broke off suddenly. Alec’s face had gone a ghastly white, and he was gazing with horrified eyes at the figure in the chair.
“I was forgetting,” Roger muttered in a low voice to Jefferson. “The boy was too young to be in the war; he’s only twenty-four. It’s a bit of a shock, one’s first corpse. Especially this sort of thing. Phew! There’s a smell of death in here. Let’s get some of these windows open.”
He turned and threw open the French windows, letting a draught of warm air into the room. “Locked on the inside all right,” he commented as he did so. “So are the other two. Here, Alec, come outside for a minute. It’s no wonder you’re feeling a bit turned up.”
Alec smiled faintly; he had managed to pull himself together and the colour was returning to his cheeks. “Oh, I’m all right,” he said, a little shakily. “It was just a bit of a shock at first.”
The breeze had fluttered the papers on the writing table and one fell to the ground. Graves, the butler, stepped forward to pick it up. Before replacing it he glanced idly at something that was written on it.
“Sir!” he exclaimed excitedly. “Look at this!”