“She doesn’t seem to have had any personal friends,” remarked Bowden, one of the reporters who had shared Austin’s taxi. “I should have thought some of the big pots—or of Sir Robert’s relatives—would have had the decency to come on. There’s Twining, the lawyer—who’s the old man beside him?”
“Sir Robert’s valet—sort of confidential attendant. His name’s Thomson,” said Austin.
Thomson, decorous and unperturbed as usual, appeared in fact to be acting as a sort of major-domo, and was giving low-voiced instructions to the undertaker’s men as they deftly removed the masses of flowers that covered the coffin. One of them handed him a large heart fashioned of purple blossoms, which he carried carefully in both hands, as he moved to a position close to the open grave, and to the priests in their imposing vestments.
“Who are the others?” whispered Starr’s companion. “Servants too? They look like foreigners. Didn’t see ’em at the church.”
He indicated two groups that had assembled each side the grave, from which the reporters stood a little apart.
“Don’t know,” Austin returned curtly, with a gesture imposing silence.
That was not entirely true; for with the group on the right, some eight or nine poorly clad men and women, with white, earnest, grief-stricken faces, was Boris Melikoff, holding in his right hand a single branch of beautiful crimson lilies.
“Russian refugees, and they are the real mourners,” Austin said to himself, and scanned each face in turn searchingly. Did any one of them know the grim secret he was determined to discover? Could any one of them, man or woman, be the actual murderer? It seemed unlikely—even impossible—as he noted their sorrow, restrained, indeed, with touching dignity, and therefore apparently the more deep and sincere.
He turned his gaze on the other group—three persons only, a man and two women. The man was Cacciola, a stately, impressive figure, his fine head bared, his long, grey locks stirred by the chill, damp breeze. His dark eyes were fixed anxiously on his beloved Boris, but he showed no other sign of emotion.