Poor Sir Cheveley was forced to pause, and whilst Lady Branksome detained him, Mr. Puttock sank into the seat which Lady Enid had left vacant for Sir Cheveley.
“Charming man, Sir Cheveley,” said Lady Branksome, with almost a laugh when he finally moved away. “I’ve known him all his life, and he was always attractive, even when he was sixteen.”
I am sure she was perfectly honest in saying that she liked Sir Cheveley. She probably liked him as much as, in her heart, she disliked Mr. Puttock.
Poor Sir Cheveley’s disappointment, however, did not prevent his being excellent company in the smoking-room.
I sat up in my own room thinking matters over till a late hour. Before I arrived at Hammerton I had had vague ideas of pushing Lord Gascoyne down a disused well, or something of that kind, in which an old feudal castle like Hammerton might be supposed to abound. On consideration, however, I came to the conclusion that Lord Gascoyne would be a very difficult person to push anywhere he did not mean to go.
I was naturally afraid of poison in such a case. It would only be possible to use it whilst I was in the house, and that was dangerous. My growing proximity to the succession was bringing me nearer and nearer to the perilous land of motive. Violence, unless I were given an extraordinarily good opportunity, was out of the question. The cigar would not do, either, for, strange to say, Lord Gascoyne hardly smoked at all. Cigars and pipes he never attempted, and I noticed that as a rule he merely lit a cigarette in order to keep his guests in countenance.
I had heard of people being made away with when out shooting, but in my case it would hardly be possible. In the first place, I did not shoot, having always had a disinclination to the brutal killing of animals for the sake of pleasure. There remained as far as I could see only the ordinary means of poisoning, with all their attendant dangers.
An instantaneous poison would be most convenient, as it was highly unlikely that I should have sufficient access to Lord Gascoyne to deal with him slowly.
I rose in the morning with one scheme after another chasing itself through my brain. Dressing rapidly, I went for a walk before breakfast round the ancient battlements. These were quite a mile in circumference, and the climbing of worn steps, hazardous scalings of the walls from whence to get a better view, and a careful examination of the various architectural designs of which the building was constructed, occupied me very pleasantly for a full hour, and it was half-past nine, the time for breakfast, when I turned to re-enter the castle. As I descended some steps which led down to the quadrangle, I was astonished to come face to face with a girl of about nineteen or twenty and a child. She was obviously a lady, but she had not been at the dinner-table the evening before, or in the picture-gallery afterwards. I concluded that she was the little boy’s governess, but who the child might be I could not imagine. I detected at once that the girl was beautiful, and when I say I detected I use the word advisedly, because it was not a beauty which would be immediately appreciated. The gray eyes, oval face, threaded gold hair, straight nose, and delicately-cut mouth were almost too frail to impress the casual observer. I saw at once, however, that she was rarely perfect in such a type of beauty as I always imagined Burns’ Mary must have possessed. She wore a quaint hood, almost like a child’s, edged with some inexpensive gray fur. The little boy looked at me shyly, and I held out my arms. A smile broke over his face and he offered me his ball, inviting me to play with him. In less than a minute we were all three laughing like old friends.
After having made myself sufficiently agreeable, I escaped from the child, who was clamouring to me to continue the game, and ran down the steps. I found Lady Gascoyne in sole possession of the breakfast-table. “I am afraid we are the only early risers, Mr. Rank,” she said.