“I think I can say that I am quite sure,” she answered, in a troubled voice. “But I confess I didn’t look at—at the face. In fact, I tried not to see it! Oh, Captain Stuart, I feel as if I shall never, never get that hand—that cuff—that bangle—out of my mind! I seem to see the poor fellow’s arm lying across the path, as if barring my way——”
He saw that her eyes were fixed with a look of horror on the ground in front of her.
“Look here!” he exclaimed authoritatively. “That’s quite wrong, Miss Fairfield—really wrong! Life is full of tragedy and unhappiness. I’ve seen some very terrible things in the last five years, and though I don’t exactly want to forget them, I never allow my mind to dwell on them. It’s morbid, as well as wrong! No doubt the poor man had lost heavily in the Rooms, and thought he would put an end to his troubles. But it was very selfish of him to go and do it there—in the garden of the people who seem to have been so kind to him.”
“If he really did do it, he didn’t do it exactly in their garden,” she said in a low voice; “it was—oh, well, I should think quite thirty yards below the place where the grounds of La Solitude end. He chose the place so carefully that it might have been months before he would have been found, had it not been that I rather foolishly thought I should like to try and find a new way down into the town.”
Somehow it was a comfort to Lily to find that Captain Stuart felt so sure Mr. Ponting had killed himself.
There was a pause. And then: “I feel better now that I’ve told you,” said Lily in a low voice.
“That’s right!” he exclaimed. “After all, we know that there are a certain number of suicides each year at Monte Carlo, though Popeau declares that there are much fewer than people believe.”
They found the Frenchman walking up and down in front of the Hôtel de Paris, and Lily, troubled and upset though she was, told herself that she had never seen such a delightful scene! The palace-like white Casino, the brilliant-coloured flowers, the palms, the blue-green sea, made a delightful background to the groups of cheerful, prosperous-looking people who were walking about the big open space between the hotel and the Casino. It seemed like a scene on another planet compared to the hillside and the quiet, lonely house where she had spent the last week. But she could not help reminding herself that ten days ago poor George Ponting had probably formed part of this gay, carefree crowd.
“Welcome!” cried M. Popeau, in his hearty voice. “It seems a long time, Miss Fairfield, since I saw you. I hope that you are very well, and that all goes happily at La Solitude?”
“Miss Fairfield has just had a most painful experience,” said Captain Stuart gravely. And then, in a few dry words, he told their French friend what had happened. But, perhaps because Lily again turned very pale, he made his story quite short.