“I met the Grendon inspector of police and his two underlings at the gate, as I was coming home last night, and he said that they had acted on instructions from London. D’you mind seeing my study, Jean? Everything is exactly as they left it. I want Dr. Maclean to see it—the rector, too! Of course I shall send in a claim for compensation.”
She followed him through the empty house, and then, at the door of what had been an orderly, even a luxurious, room, she stopped, amazed at the sight before her.
The cupboard doors of a large Chippendale bookcase were wide open, and the books had been roughly turned out of the shelves and lay all over the floor. The drawers of the writing table were drawn out as far as they would go, and the top drawer, which had been locked, had been wrenched open with some rough instrument.
As a girl Emily Garlett had collected shells, and her small shell cabinet had been kept in this, her husband’s study. Even that had not been spared rough desecration. The cotton wool on which the shells had rested had been thrown out, and lay in wads on the carpet.
“This is the worst room,” said Harry Garlett quietly. “But my bedroom’s in a pretty queer state, too, and as for the dining room, you’d think burglars had been in it!”
“Did they say what they wanted to find?” asked Jean wonderingly.
“They made a regular mystery of it, and yet they were fools enough to ask that poor old cook and her daughter if they had found any packets of gray or white powder about!”
“Gray or white powder?” she said uncertainly.
“Not salt or pepper—arsenic!” he said bitterly.
Then he again took her in his arms, and kissed her with a passion that half frightened her.