Freda turned sick with horror. Her mind had jumped, with that splendid feminine inspiration which acts independently of logic, and which is as often marvellously right as stupendously wrong, to the conclusion that the body of Blewitt had been carried into the Abbey. So certain did she feel of this, that the question she asked herself was: Why was this done? And not: Was this done at all? She turned away from the wall, and went back, this time avoiding the foot-track, which she believed to have been made on a guilty errand. She was too horror-struck for tears. She gazed upon the beautiful old house, as she slowly drew near to it again, as she would have done on some unhallowed tomb. The sun, which had been shining brightly all the morning, had begun to melt the snow on the flagged roof, so that patches of moss-grown stone appeared here and there where the white mass had slid down, partially dissolved by the warm rays. The main body of the house was Tudor, of warm red brick with gables, mullioned windows, and stacks of handsome chimneys. But the west wing the so-called Abbot’s House, was a plain structure of solid grey stone, with one little scrap of decorated tooth work to bear witness to its connection with the Abbey.
There were secrets behind warm red bricks and venerable grey stone that it was better not to think upon. For the awful conviction was pressing in upon her that if the body of the murdered manservant had been brought there, it could only be to conceal the fact of his murder. Unless, then, it was this mysterious father of hers who had fired the shot, who could it have been?
CHAPTER XII.
The following was the day of the inquest. It was to be held at the Abbey itself, and Mrs. Bean had swept the drawing-room, and uncovered the furniture in that dismal and damp apartment, so that the coroner and jury might hold their deliberation there. Freda, who followed the housekeeper about like her shadow, without acknowledging that it was because a horror had grown upon her of being left alone in that dreary old house, was helping to dust the old-fashioned ornaments.
“Mrs. Bean,” she said at last, stopping in the act of dusting the glass shade over an alabaster urn, in order to clap her hands together to warm them, “aren’t you going to light a fire here?”
“Yes, I will presently,” answered the housekeeper, whose lips and nose and hands were purple and stiff with cold.
“It will take a long time to warm this great room, won’t it?”
“Oh, the fire will soon burn up when it’s once lighted.”
However, it didn’t get lighted at all until half an hour before the coroner and jurymen arrived; and when Mrs. Bean did remember it, she put in the grate a small handful of newspaper and a few damp sticks which gave forth smoke instead of heat, and after hissing and spluttering for some minutes, finally gave up the task of burning altogether.
Freda stood by the kitchen fire, trying to puzzle out the meaning of these strange actions, while Mrs. Bean went out into the court-yard at the summons of the gate-bell. When the housekeeper returned, she met a gaze from the young girl’s eyes which made her feel uneasy.