“She wasn’t dead, then, the first glimpse you had of her after you stopped playing?” McCarty himself did not find it easy to continue, with that silent, dominant presence before them.
“I don’t know—but she must have been, of course! She didn’t move and there was no sign of her breath! I can’t understand it! What frightful thing can have stricken her?”
“Suppose you tell me from the beginning.” McCarty restrained his impatience. “How did she and the child come here?”
“I was seated here alone at the organ, improvising as I do when I am disturbed in mind, for this misfortune to little Horace affected me deeply.” He paused as though to collect himself, glanced again with a shudder at the body of the young French girl and turned away. “The room seemed overpoweringly warm and I went to the window there and opened it wider to see Lucette and the baby just outside, listening. The child is entranced with music and once or twice before Lucette has brought her in at my invitation; Mrs. Bellamy is much amused at little Maude’s devotion to me. When I saw them standing there I suggested that they come in and myself opened the door for them. Lucette seated herself there where you see her now and took the baby up on her lap. I returned to the organ, really forgetting their presence the moment I was seated again before it. Handel’s ‘Largo’ came into my thoughts, although it is scarcely the sort of thing to appeal to a child and I played it through to the end. In the silence, as the last notes died away, the patter of little feet running across the marble floor recalled my guests to my mind and I turned. Little Maude was playing about that palm over there, trying to reach the lowest of its broad leaves but Lucette was—as you see her. I don’t know—I can’t recall what I thought for the moment—possibly that she had fallen asleep or was still relaxed under the spell of the music, but almost instantly it came to me that something was wrong. I called her name sharply, I remember, and hurried to her side but before I touched her I seemed to know the truth—that she was dead!”
“You didn’t move her, Mr. Orbit? The position of the body is just the same?”
“I raised one of her hands to feel her pulse but there was no slightest beat beneath my fingers and I lowered it to the bench and drew her head forward. One look was enough and I let it roll back once more, calling for Ching Lee. The baby had trotted over to me and I took her up in my arms to keep her from approaching Lucette. I think it was Jean who appeared first, but Ching Lee came immediately after and I told him to send for the doctor; when he came back from the telephone he said you were passing and I had him stop you.” Orbit passed a shaking hand once more across his forehead. “What could have brought death to that girl, McCarty? I’m not ignorantly superstitious but it seems as if some horrible, malign thing were settling down over us here in the Mall and the horror deepens! First Hughes, then Horace’s disappearance and now this inexplicable tragedy right under my roof, in my very presence! It is enough to shake a man’s reason!”
“You’re sure you were alone in the house, with just the servants, I mean?” McCarty had advanced to the body again and was scrutinizing it carefully without touching it. “Those front windows are flush with the sidewalk but nobody could have climbed in very well in broad daylight with the watchman patrolling the block. How about that glass wall where it bulges out? The lower panes open as well as the upper ones, don’t they?”
He pointed to the farther side of the room built out like a huge bay-window and Orbit nodded.
“Of course, but they are never touched, except for an hour on the hottest of summer days; the tropical orchids banked there would die instantly if a cool breeze blew over them and the sections of glass can only be reached with a long pole. No one could force a way through the plants without leaving some trace or making their presence known. There is a French window in the card-room which is probably open and a person might enter unseen from the court between this house and Goddard’s, and the kitchen or tradesmen’s door may have been left ajar.” He spoke slowly as if to himself. “The cook is out and Jean, Ching Lee and Fu Moy are the only others in the house besides myself. Great heavens, Sir Philip arrives this evening! I had a wire from him!”
“That’s the English gentleman who’s on his way from the West? Sir Philip Dever—something?” McCarty recalled their conversation of the previous day.