Verdict? Oh, yes, the verdict. It was: That the deceased died from the effects of a gunshot wound; but by whose hand the weapon was discharged there was no evidence to show.
Mrs. Bean ushered them out with a decently grave and sad visage. But when she re-entered the house from the court-yard she was singing like a lark.
Freda was puzzled. Back to the recess she went, and feeling with her feet and her crutch very carefully, she soon touched the rattling boards. Then she dropped upon her knees, lit her candle and passed her hand over the floor. Two of the boards were loose, she found, and looking round for something with which to try to raise them, she saw a flattened iron bar lying close under the wall. Suspecting that this had been used previously for the same purpose, she proceeded to raise one of the boards with it. This task easily accomplished, she shifted the board so as to be able to see underneath it.
Extending to a depth of four feet below the surface of the floor, was one of those mysterious enclosures between the ceiling of one room and the floor of the one above, which so often exists in very old houses to testify to forgotten dangers of persecution and pursuit. It was dark, close, musty. Freda bent lower and lower, her eyes fixed in horror on an object at the bottom. Something long, swathed in white: the body of a dead man.
Freda had begun this search full of suspicion; but the shock was almost as great as if she had been entirely unprepared for the discovery of this ghastly secret. She did not scream, although after the first shock she put her hands before her mouth in the belief that she had done so. She felt benumbed, stunned. Who was it? She must look, she must find out, if the discovery killed her. With trembling hands she picked up her candle, which had fallen and gone out, and relighting it, peered down at the dead face.
For the first moment she did not recognise it, or death had refined the coarse outline and effaced the sinister expression. Presently, however, came full recollection. It was the dead face of the servant Blewitt.
CHAPTER XIII.
The body of Blewitt, still wearing its clothes, had been wrapped in a sheet and dragged to this hiding-place that morning. As soon as she recognised the dead face, Freda sprang up from her knees, dropping her candle and forgetting to replace the loose board. With flying feet, not caring now who heard her, she went clattering down the stairs, sick with horror of the house and everything in it, capable of only one thought, one wish: that she could leave it at once, never to enter it again.
The front door into the garden was ajar. Freda ran out into the snow, which was now falling pretty thickly. But the intense cold was pleasant to her: it seemed to give a little relief to her feverishly hot head. She ran to the bottom of the garden; but the door in the wall was locked. Returning slowly, despondently, she caught sight of the door leading to the out-house and stable-yard. This had been left open. She saw the track of many feet leading to one of the out-houses, and guessing that it was that in which the jury had viewed her father’s body, she instantly resolved to satisfy herself on one point of the mystery. The door was not locked. Creeping in, her heart beating wildly with excitement, Freda found herself in a bare stone-paved building, which might once have been a court-house. It was badly lighted by a small window, high up in the right-hand wall. Near the middle of the floor was a coffin, supported by trestles. Freda approached slowly, her feet slipping on the pavement, which was wet with snow brought in by many feet. She was so much stupefied by the sensations of the morning that she was no longer able to feel any shock acutely. One dull pang of astonishment rather than any other feeling shot through her as she looked in, expecting to see her father’s face.
The coffin was empty.