Lying on his face by the fireplace, in which red ashes still glowed, Gerald Carron lay dead, a revolver near him, his face in a small pool of blood.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Lady Kingsmead fainted dead away for once in her life, dropping in a huddled heap near the man she had loved and unloved.
Brigit stared at them for a moment, wondering vaguely which of them was dead, which only fainting. Then, just as she was kneeling to raise her mother to a better position, the door opened and two men, one of them Giacomo, Carron's valet, entered in great haste.
The second man was, he explained, a doctor, whom the valet had gone for on finding his master's body.
The next few minutes were minutes that Brigit never forgot. The Italian servant, chattering and weeping, the young doctor helping her to loosen Lady Kingsmead's tight clothes; his hurried explanations and questions; the very closeness of the air, with the smell of gunpowder still faintly perceptible.
Lady Kingsmead, laid upon Carron's bed, came to in a few minutes in violent hysterics, and the young doctor, when he had given her a soothing draught, insisted on the two women leaving.
"I must send for the coroner," he explained, "and it will be unpleasant. Your cab is still at the door, I think? May I have your address?"
He was very civil and sympathetic, this young medico, but he was also rather too obviously impressed by his own importance and this gruesome occasion. Brigit gave him the address of her flat, and helping her mother into a four-wheeler, as more suitable than a hansom, the two women drove away towards Kensington.