A new butler said that Sir Brian was expecting them. Sir Brian was brusquely civil. He was very glad to find that the case was being reopened. The whole place was at their orders. Anything he could do——
“I thought I might just look round,” Reggie said. “We are rather after the fair, though.” He did not think it necessary to tell Sir Brian that Lord Carwell’s body would be dug up that night.
They were taken across a hall with a noble roof of hammer beams to the place of the murder. The library was panelled in oak, which at a man’s height from the ground flowered into carving. The ceiling was moulded into a hundred coats of arms, each blazoned with its right device, and the glow and colour of them, scarlet and bright blue and gold, filled the room. Black presses with vast locks stood here and there. A stool was on either side the great open hearth. By the massive table a stern fifteenth-century chair was set.
Bell gazed about him and breathed heavily. “Splendid room, sir,” he said. “Quite palatial.”
“But it’s not what I’d want after dinner myself,” Reggie murmured.
“I’ve no use for the place,” said Sir Brian. “But it suited Hugo. He would never have a thing changed. He was really a survival. Poor old Hugo.”
“He was sitting here?” Reggie touched the chair.
“So they tell me. I didn’t see him till some time after the girl found him. You’d better hear what she has to say.”
A frightened and agitated housemaid testified that his lordship had been sitting in that chair bent over the table and his head rested on it, and the left side of his head was all smashed, and on the table was a pool of his blood. She would never forget it, never. She became aware of Reggie’s deepening frown. “That’s the truth, sir,” she cried, “so help me God, it is.”
“I know, I know,” said Reggie. “No blood anywhere else? No other marks in the room?”