It was Lady Jane, the gentle soul who had loved that poor clay with a love that had grown and strengthened with every year of his life, with a love that had won liberal response from the recipient. There had never been a cloud between them, never one moment of disagreement or doubt. Each had been secure in the certainty of the other’s affection. It had been a union such as is not often seen between mother and son; and it was ended—ended by the red hand of murder.
Matthew Dalbrook left the room in silence, beckoning to the housekeeper to follow him.
“Leave them together,” he said. “They will be more comfort to each other than anyone else in the world can be to either of them. Keep in the way—here, in the corridor, in case of anything going wrong—fainting, or hysterics, for instance,—but so long as they are tolerably calm let them be together, and undisturbed.”
He went back to his son, and they both left the house soon afterwards and drove off to find the Coroner and to confer with him. Later in the afternoon they saw the local policeman, whose discoveries, though he evidently thought them important, Mr. Dalbrook considered nil.
He had found out that a certain village freebooter—ostensibly an agricultural labourer, nocturnally a poacher—bore a grudge against Lord Cheriton, and had sworn to be even with him sooner or later. The constable opined that, being an ignorant man, this person might have mistaken Lord Cheriton’s son-in-law for Lord Cheriton himself.
He had discovered, in the second place, that two vans of gipsies had encamped just outside the Chase on the night after the arrival of the bridal pair. They were, in fact, the very gipsies who had provided Aunt Sally and the French shooting-gallery for the amusement of the populace, and he opined that some of these gipsies were “in it.”
Why they should be in it he did not take upon himself to explain, but he declared that his experience of the tribe justified his suspicions. He was also of opinion that the murderer had come with the intent to plunder the drawing-room, which was, in his own expression, “chock-full of valuables,” and that, being disappointed, and furthermore detected, in that intent, he had tried to make all things safe by a casual murder.
“But, man alive, Sir Godfrey was sitting in his arm-chair, absorbed in his book. There was nothing to prevent any intending burglar sneaking away unseen. You must find some better scent than that if you mean to track the murderer.”
“I hope, sir, with my experience of the district, I shall have a better chance of finding him than a stranger imported from the Metropolis,” said Constable Barber, severely. “I conclude there will be a reward offered, Mr. Dalbrook?”
“There will, and a large one. I must not take upon myself to name the figure. Lord Cheriton will be here to-morrow or next day, and he will, no doubt, take immediate steps. You may consider yourself a very lucky man, Barber, if you can solve this mystery.”