Just then the moon shone forth brightly for a moment, and Lionel heard voices again in the direction of the court-yard; but the intervening walls were too thick for him to hear distinctly anything that was said.
As he came forth to reconnoitre a pistol was fired, and then a terrible cry broke upon the still evening air—a shriek that echoed through the broken old corridors, startling the bats and the owls. Hurrying to the spot, Lionel found Richard Tallant stretched upon the turf. And now the moon shone forth in all its autumnal glory, sending a pale gleam through the court-yard and athwart the figure of the dying man.
Hastily raising the body up, Lionel found that the man had been shot through the right temple. The ball must have penetrated the brain, for he was quite dead, and the blood was streaming down his pale cheek.
One of the castle servants had heard the report of the pistol and the cry that followed it, and he had hurried to the ruin too, and found Lionel supporting the dead body. Mr. Hammerton bade him alarm the household, and in a short time Richard Tallant was lying dead in the room to which his luggage had been carried.
What a terrible night it was—that night of the murder! The police came from Brazencrook, and made all sorts of inquiries. They found a pistol lying near the spot where the body was found. A case of suicide was the first suggestion; but it seemed that a breast-pocket in the gentleman’s coat was turned inside out, and torn as if something had been violently removed from it, and there was a bruise on the back of the right hand as if the deceased had attempted for a moment to defend himself after he had fallen, and been struck with a stick or with the butt-end of the pistol.
“Where is her ladyship?” Lionel asked of the maid.
“In her room, and very unwell indeed,” was the reply.
Who could have committed this terrible deed? The thought flashed through Lionel’s mind, and with it just the whisper of a terrible suspicion. What an awful weight of anxiety and misery it was!
The superintendent of the Brazencrook police intimated that he would like to put a few questions to Mr. Hammerton and the groom in his lordship’s presence, and also to Lord Verner himself. His lordship, therefore, invited the officer to go into the library with himself and the Brazencrook vicar, and here the policeman finished his inquiry for that day in the following manner:
First he obtained from Lord Verner the particulars of Mr. Tallant’s arrival, and having brought the story up to the point where Mr. Tallant went out upon the terrace with his sister, the policeman desired to see Lady Verner, that she might continue the narrative; whereupon Lord Verner rebuked him as an insolent fellow, and reminded him that he was in the presence of the Lord-Lieutenant of the county.