Crewe then examined the room behind the front room in which Marsland and Miss Maynard had sat before discovering the murdered man. It was the front room of an English farm-house of a bygone age, kept for show and state occasions but not for use, crowded with big horse-hair chairs and a horse-hair sofa. There were two tables—a large round one with a mahogany top and a smaller one used as a stand for the lamp Marsland had lit—a glass case of stuffed birds; an old clock in a black case on the mantelpiece, which had been stopped so long that its works were festooned with spiders’ webs; a few dingy oil-paintings on the walls, alternately representing scenes from the Scriptures and the English chase, and a moth-eaten carpet on the floor. There was also a small glass bookcase in a corner containing some bound volumes of the Leisure Hour of the sixties, Peter Parley’s Annual, Johnson’s Dictionary, an ancient Every Day Book, and an old family Bible with brass clasps.
It was in the room next to the sitting-room that Crewe found the first article which suggested possibilities of a clue. It was a small room, which had evidently been used by a former occupant as an office, for it contained an oak case holding account books, some files of yellowing bills hanging from nails on the wall, and an old-fashioned writing bureau. It was this last article that attracted Crewe’s attention. It was unlocked, and he examined closely the papers it contained. But they threw no light on the mystery of Cliff Farm, being for the most part business letters, receipted bills, and household accounts.
There was a bundle of faded letters in one of the pigeon-holes tied with black ribbon, which had been written to Mrs. James Lumsden from somebody who signed himself “Yours to command, Geoffrey La Touche.” These letters were forty years old, and had been sent during a period of three years from “Her Majesty’s sloop Hyacinth” at different foreign ports. They were stiff and formal, though withal courteous in tone, and various passages in them suggested that the writer had been an officer in the Royal Navy and a relative of Mrs. Lumsden. They ceased with a letter written to “James Lumsden, Esq.,” expressing the writer’s “deep regret and sincere sorrow” on learning of his “dear niece’s sad and premature end.”
There was another room opposite this office which had doubtless been intended for a breakfast-room, but was now stored with odds and ends: superfluous articles of furniture, some trunks, a pile of bound volumes of the Illustrated London News, and a few boxes full of miscellaneous rubbish. The passage on which these rooms opened terminated in two stone steps leading into the kitchen, which was the full width of the house. A notable piece of furniture in this room was an oaken dresser with shelves reaching to the ceiling. There were also a deal table, some kitchen chairs, and an arm-chair.
From the blackened beams of its low sloping ceiling some hams and strings of onions hung, and an open tea-caddy stood on the table, with a leaden spoon in it, as though somebody had recently been making tea. An old brown earthenware teapot stood by the fire-place with tea-leaves still in the pot, and Crewe noticed on the mantelpiece a churchwarden pipe, with a spill of paper alongside. He found a pair of horn spectacles and an old newspaper on the top of the press beside the old-fashioned fire-place. Evidently the kitchen had been the favourite room of Frank Lumsden’s grandfather—the eccentric old man who had built the landing-place.
Before examining the upper portion of the house Crewe closed the doors and windows he had opened, restoring things to the condition in which he had found them. Then he went upstairs, and, after opening the windows and blinds as he had opened them downstairs, entered the room in which the murdered man had been discovered.
It was while Crewe was thus engaged that his quick ears detected a slight crunch of footsteps on the ground outside, as though somebody was approaching the house. The room he was searching looked out on pasture land, but he was aware that there was a gravel path on the other side, running from the outbuildings at the side to the rear of the house. He crossed over to the corresponding room on that side of the house, and looked out of the open window, but could see no one.
He ran quietly downstairs and into the kitchen. His idea was to watch the intruder by looking through one of the kitchen windows, without revealing his own presence, but he found to his annoyance that the little diamond shaped kitchen window which looked out on the back was so placed as to command a view of only a small portion of the bricked yard at the back of the house.
He waited for a moment in the hope that the visitor would enter the house through the unlocked kitchen door, but as he heard no further sound he decided to go in search of the person whose footsteps he had heard. He opened the door and looked over the empty yard. Suddenly a woman’s figure appeared in the doorway of the barn on the left. Immediately she saw Crewe she retreated into the shed in the hope that she had not been seen. In order to undeceive her on this point, Crewe walked down the yard to the barn, but before he reached it she came out to meet him. She was young and pretty and well dressed.
“You are Mr. Crewe,” she said with composure.