She went into one of the sitting-rooms and brought out a sofa-cushion. The Squire, going down on his knees, for he was not good at stooping, told me to slip it under while he raised the head.
A sound of feet, a sudden flash of light from a bull’s-eye, and a policeman came upon the scene. The man was quietly passing on his beat when met by Susan. In her excitement she told him what had happened, and sent him in. We knew the man, whose beat lay at this end of Saltwater; a civil man, named Knapp. He knelt down where the Squire had just been kneeling, touching Jane Cross here and there.
“She’s dead, sir,” he said. “There can be no mistake about that.”
“She must have fallen down the well of the staircase, I fear,” observed the Squire.
“Well—yes; perhaps so,” assented the man in a doubtful tone. “But what of this?”
He flung the great light in front of poor Jane Cross’s dress. A small portion of the body, where the gown fastened in front, had been torn away, as well as one of the wristbands.
“It’s no fall,” said the man. “It’s foul play—as I think.”
“Goodness bless me!” gasped the Squire. “Some villains must have got in. This comes of that other one’s having left the front door on the latch.” But I am not sure that any of us, including himself, believed she could be really dead.
Susan returned with speed, and was followed by Mr. Lockett. He was a young man, thirty perhaps, pale and quiet, and much like what I remembered of his brother. Poor Jane Cross was certainly dead, he said—had been dead, he thought, an hour.