‘Who else should?’
He shrugged his shoulders, remarking, ‘No proof, I said. Perhaps he did, perhaps not. We don’t know.’
‘Help me with her,’ said I brusquely.
Between us we lifted her and laid her on the couch, and spread over her a fur rug that draped one of the chairs. While this was done we did not exchange a word with one another. Mouraki uttered a sigh of relief when the task was finished.
‘I’ll send a couple of women up as soon as we get back. Meanwhile the place is guarded and nobody can come in. Need we delay longer? It is not a pleasant place.’
‘I should think we might as well go,’ I answered, casting my eye again round the little room to the spot where Vlacho had fallen enveloped in the curtain which he dragged down with him, and to the writing-table that had supported the dead body of Francesca. Mouraki’s hand was on the door-handle. He stood there, impatient to be out of the place, waiting for me to accompany him. But my last glance had seen something new, and with a sudden low exclamation I darted across the room to the table. I had perceived a sheet of paper lying just where Francesca’s head had rested.
‘What’s the matter?’ asked Mouraki.
I made him no answer. I seized the piece of paper. A pen lay between it and the inkstand. On the paper was a line or two of writing. The characters were blurred, as though the dead woman’s hair had smeared them before the ink was dry. I held it up. Mouraki stepped briskly across to me.
‘Give it to me,’ he said, holding out his hand. ‘It may be something I ought to see.’
The first hint of action, of new light or a new development, restored their cool alertness to my faculties.