“Drowned? No! Dead before she ever went under the water. Murdered, beyond the shadow of a doubt.”
It is Captain Ryecroft who thus emphatically affirms. And to himself, being alone, within his room in the Wyeside Hotel; for he is still in Herefordshire.
More in conjecture, he proceeds—“They first smothered, I suppose, or in some way rendered her insensible; then carried her to the place and dropped her in, leaving the water to complete their diabolical work? A double death as it were; though she may not have suffered its agonies twice. Poor girl! I hope not.”
In prosecuting the inquiry to which he has devoted himself, beyond certain unavoidable communications with Jack Wingate, he has not taken any one into his confidence. This partly from having no intimate acquaintances in the neighbourhood, but more because he fears the betrayal of his purpose. It is not ripe for public exposure, far less bringing before a court of justice. Indeed, he could not yet shape an accusation against any one, all that he has learnt new serving only to satisfy him that his original suspicions were correct; which it has done, as shown by his soliloquy.
He has since made a second boat excursion down the bye-channel—made it in the day time, to assure himself there was no mistake in his observations under the light of the lamp. It was for this he had bespoken Wingate’s skiff for the following day; for certain reasons reaching Llangorren at the earliest hour of dawn. There and then to see what surprised him quite as much as the unexpected discovery of the night before—a grand breakage from the brow of the cliff. But not any more misleading him. If the first “sign” observed there failed to blind him, so does that which has obliterated it. No natural rock-slide, was the conclusion he came to, soon as setting eyes upon it; but the work of human hands! And within the hour, as he could see by the clods of loosened earth still dropping down and making muddy the water underneath; while bubbles were ascending from the detached boulder lying invisible below!
Had he been there only a few minutes earlier, himself invisible, he would have seen a man upon the cliff’s crest, busy with a crowbar, levering the rock from its bed, and tilting it over—then carefully removing the marks of the iron implement, as also his own footprints!
That man saw him through the blue-grey dawn, in his skiff coming down the river; just as on the preceding night under the light of the moon. For he thus early astir and occupied in a task as that of Sysiphus, was no other than Father Rogier.
The priest had barely time to retreat and conceal himself, as the boat drew down to the eyot. Not this time crouching among the ferns; but behind some evergreens, at a farther and safer distance. Still near enough for him to observe the other’s look of blank astonishment on beholding the débacle, and note the expression change to one of significant intelligence as he continued gazing at it.
“Un limier veritable! A hound that has scented blood, and’s determined to follow it up, till he find the body whence it flowed. Aha! The game must be got out of his way. Llangorren will have to change owners once again, and the sooner the better.”
At the very moment these thoughts were passing through the mind of Gregoire Rogier, the “veritable bloodhound” was mentally repeating the same words he had used on the night before: “No accident—no suicide—murdered!” adding, as his eyes ranged over the surface of red sandstone, so altered in appearance, “This makes me all the more sure of it. Miserable trick! Not much Mr Lewin Murdock will gain by it.”