Dimly we saw the tall figure reach the top and walk along the gallery, as if he saw someone at the end—and at that moment the peril came to the three of us.
To Dick and Jack the rottenness of the balustrade; to me—the end of the vicar’s story. What they thought I know not; but to my dying day I shall never forget my own agony of mind. In that corner of the musicians’ gallery—though we could see her not—stood Lady Wrothley; to the man walking slowly towards her the door was opening slowly—the door which had remained shut the night before—the door behind which lay the terror.
And then it all happened very quickly. In a frenzy we raced across the room, to get at him—but we weren’t in time. There was a rending of wood—a dreadful crash—a sprawling figure on the floor below. To me it seemed as if he had hurled himself against the balustrade, had literally dived downwards. The others did not notice it—so they told me later. But I did.
And then we were kneeling beside him on the floor.
“Dear God!” I heard Drage say in a hoarse whisper. “He’s dead; he’s broken his neck.”
· · · · ·
Such is my story. Jack Drage blames himself for the rottenness of the woodwork, but I feel it was my fault. Yes—it was my fault. I ought to have known, ought to have done something. Even if we’d only locked the dining-room door.
And the last link in the chain I haven’t mentioned yet. The vicar supplied that—though to him it was merely a strange coincidence.
The baby-girl—born in the gallery—a strange, imaginative child, so run the archives, subject to fits of awful depression and, at other times, hallucinations—married. She married in 1551, on the 30th day of October, Henry, only son of Frank Sibton and Mary his wife.
God knows: I don’t. It may have been an accident.