The balcony was searched from end to end. Then one of the guests more venturesome, descended the steps. He gave a cry of horror. "Bring a light," he cried.
Lights were brought and everyone rushed after them. Half way down the steps lay Miss Wharf--dead--strangled, and round her throat tightly bound was a yellow and red silk tie.
[CHAPTER X]
A Mysterious Case
The murder of Miss Sophia Wharf at the Bristol Hotel ball, made a great sensation. She had been well-known in Marport, and her many friends were enormously excited that each and everyone of them had been acquainted with a person who had been--as one of them put it--done to death. Also the circumstances of the murder were most extraordinary. It seemed almost incredible that a popular lady should be murdered in so public a place; though many said, that the safety of the assassin lay in the very fact that he had chosen to commit his crime, a few yards away from a spot where many people were congregated. But who had killed Miss Wharf and why she was killed in so brutal a manner, no one could understand.
When the local police heard of the assassination, an Inspector with two subordinates took possession of the hotel, and obtained from the manager a list of the guests present at the ball. As these amounted to something like two hundred, it seemed like looking for a needle in a haystack to search for the criminal amongst them. And many of them did not know Miss Wharf even by sight, so it was certain that the task of identifying the assassin would be one of enormous difficulty. And the question was asked on all hands. "What had taken the deceased lady down the little-frequented steps?" The fan was missing--Miss Pewsey noticed that, when she bent over the dead, but the story of the fan was not yet public property.
According to custom the local police communicated with the Treasury, who placed the case in the hands of the Criminal Investigation Department, and thus it came about, that a plain clothes officer--in other words a detective--was sent down to Marport. This individual was called Rogers, and after paying a visit to the Superintendent of the Marport Police Office, he went to Ivy Lodge. Here, everything was gloomy and silent. The body of the unfortunate woman had been brought home, and was laid out for burial. Dr. Forge, who with others had been on the spot at the time of the discovery, examined the corpse, and asserted that the miserable woman must have been murdered just an hour, or half an hour previous. As midnight was chiming shortly before the discovery of the crime, it can be safely declared--and Dr. Forge did declare this--that Miss Wharf was strangled between eleven and twelve. When the corpse was found it was yet warm, Clarence haunted the Lodge and talked with his aunt, but Olivia kept to her own room.
"Tung-yu did it of course," said Mr. Burgh decisively. "I reckon he came down to get that fan, and grudged giving so much cash for it. I surmise that he lured the old girl to those steps, and then slipped the silk string round her neck."
"The silk tie," said Miss Pewsey whose eyes were very black and glittering, though red round the rims, from weeping.
"How do you know it's a tie?" asked Clarence with a start.