“That? Oh, over to Victor Lunt’s place. His park—he calls it a park too, but it’s a small affair—almost joins this, you know.”
“Well, well, let’s see the body,” Reggie yawned, and they marched on to Prior’s Colney.
It had once been a comely place in a staid eighteenth-century fashion. “Oh, my only aunt!” Reggie groaned. “Looks like your grandmother put into the Russian ballet.” It was loaded with excrescences of contorted ornament still raw and new against the mellow solemnity of the original homely house.
A motor-car stood at the door. While they were detaching hats and sticks in the hall, they could hear some one being told that Lady Lunt was not leaving her room. Then, being shown out, came a bulky man muffled in a fur coat with a big Astrakhan collar. He had a large head and a long face of unhealthy complexion. Across the forehead from right eyebrow to hair was a red furrow. He had prominent, pale eyes.
“Who is the sportsman with the scratched face?” Reggie said, as the door shut on him.
“Oh, that’s Victor Lunt. Been inquiring after Lady Lunt, I suppose.”
“Bright and brotherly,” Reggie murmured.
There appeared briskly a man of grave and military aspect, who was presented to Reggie as Radnor Hall, Sir Albert Lunt’s secretary. Radnor Hall (in a faintly American accent) was very glad to see Mr. Fortune; hoped for Mr. Fortune’s company to lunch; after which, Lady Lunt was most anxious to see Mr. Fortune.
“I want to see the body,” Reggie said gruffly.
So to the body he was taken, and saw that Gerald Barnes was right enough: there could be no doubt of the cause of death. A pistol bullet, fired from some little distance, had entered the chest and lodged in the spinal vertebræ. Sir Albert Lunt might not have died on the instant. He could not have lived long. But that mortal wound was tiny. What made the dead man look horrible was the gash in his forehead and the bruise round it. And over that Reggie frowned and pondered. “Showy, isn’t it, very showy?” he complained. Such a hurt a man might get by falling on a stone. But Sir Albert Lunt had fallen on his back on the turf. If some one had hit him with a stone or some such jagged thing—but why should any man take a stone who had a pistol and was not afraid to use it? “If there was any sense in it, I’d say it was a fake,” Reggie grumbled.