“Yes, sir, more or less; some of the alibis are clear as glass. To tell you the truth, I don’t suspect any one in the house. Some of the servants have got ‘confused alibis’ as you call it, but they’re all obviously all right. That’s the servants; it’s the same only more so with the others. Take the secretary, Mr. Deacon; he was up there in his room the whole time. There’s one, p’r’aps two witnesses to prove it. The same with Miss Hoode. And the other lady; to be sure she’s got no witnesses, but that murder wasn’t her job, nor any woman’s. Take Sir Arthur, it’s the same thing again. Even if there was anything suspicious—which there wasn’t—about his relations with the deceased, you can’t suspect a man who was, to the actual knowledge of five or six witnesses who saw him, sitting upstairs in his room during the only possible time when the murder can have been done.
“No, sir!” Boyd shook his head with vigour. “It’s no good looking in the house. Take it from me.”
“I will, Boyd; for the present anyhow.” Anthony rose and stretched himself. “Can I see the study?”
Boyd jumped up with alacrity. “You can, sir. We’ve been in there a lot, taking photos, etcetera; but it’s untouched—just as it was when they found the body.”
Chapter IV.
The Study
Once across the threshold of the dead minister’s study, Anthony experienced a change of feeling, of mental attitude. Until now he had looked at the whole business in his usual detached and semi-satirical way; the reasons for his presence at Abbotshall had been two only—affection for Spencer Hastings and desire to satisfy that insistent craving for some definite and difficult task to perform. He had even felt, at intervals throughout the morning, a wish to laugh.
But, now, fairly in the room, this aloofness failed him. It was not that he felt any sudden surge of personal regret. It was rather that, for him at least, despite the sunlight which blazed incongruously in every corner, some cold, dark beastliness brooded everywhere.
The big room was gay with chintz and as yet unfaded flowers of the day before; the solid furniture was of some beauty—in fact, a charming room. Yet Anthony shivered even before he had seen the thing lying grotesque upon the hearth. When he did see it, somehow the sight shook him out of the nightmare of dark fancy. He stepped forward to look more closely.
Came the sound of a commotion from the hall. With a muttered excuse, Boyd went quickly from the room. Anthony knelt to examine the body.
It sprawled upon the hearth-rug, legs towards the window in the opposite wall. The red-tiled edge of the open grate forced up the neck. The almost hairless head was dreadfully battered; crossed and recrossed by five or six gaping gashes, each nearly half an inch wide and an inch or so deep. Of the scalp little remained but islands and peninsulas of skin and bone streaked with the dark brown of dried blood, among it ribands of gray film where the brain had oozed from the wounds.