Dr Fell grunted. He went over, bent across the body, and held his eyeglasses on while he had a brief look at it. Then he signalled to Rampole and waddled towards the door without a word.
In silence they descended the stairs. Rampole thought he heard behind them somewhere the click of a closing latch. He thought he saw a figure somewhere in the upper hall but his thoughts were so warped with stealth and murder, and the ghostliness of this ancient house, that he paid scant attention.
He followed Dr Fell down the lower hallway until they reached the library. It was another high room at the rear, done in white. Three walls, even around the window spaces, were built entirely of books; the white-painted lines of the shelves showed up startlingly against the dark old volumes. The fourth wall was cream-panelled, with a white marbled fireplace above which hung a full-length portrait of Sir William Bitton in a massive gilt frame. Flanking the fireplace, two long windows looked out on a garden.
Dr Fell stood in the middle of the dusky room, peering about curiously. A low fire flickered on the brass and irons a pink-shaded lamp burned on a table amid the heavy upholstered furniture round the fireplace.
`There's only one thing now,' the doctor said in a' low voice, `that I've got to be profoundly thankful for. Arbor still thinks I'm Hadley. I may be able, to keep him away from Hadley altogether.
'Thankful? Why?'
`Look behind you,' the other said, nodding.
Rampole switched round. He had not heard Laura Bitton come in over, the thick carpet. And for a moment he scarcely recognized her.
She seemed much older and much quieter. Nor was she the vigorous young woman with the firm step and the level brown eyes who had walked so confidently into the Warders' Hall that afternoon. The eyes were a trifle red; the face fixed and dull.
'I followed you down,' she said, evenly. 'I heard you in the other room: The voice was queer, as though she could not quite understand yet that her husband was dead. `You know all about it, don't you?'