We were standing indecisive in the passage. Hardly a minute had passed since the end of the laughter. A scream suddenly sounded from the lawn beyond the Hall of the Moth, a cry of agony which might have seemed terrible had not it been for that astounding laugh which had preceded it. In its awful context the scream was pitifully thin and feeble, but it was human, certainly.
“That’s on the lawn.”
“Yes, Governor,” choked Lib, following me at a half-run through the gallery-door of the Hall, through the nearest french windows, and so to the drive.
Beside the small tower near the mended conservatory window something dark was stretched, with three or four people about it. While Lib and I were still thirty feet away, we could tell in the widespread light of the Hall chandelier that a body lay there.
“It’s a corpse,” cried Lib. “Oh, my God, is it Bobby?” She rushed forward.
I turned to Soames. “Round up the others, quickly.”
“Y‑yes, sir”; he went back with the ineffable water.
I remember that just as I came up from the lower french doors of the Hall, Belvoir, crossing the lawn from the direction of Aidenn Water, arrived at the other side of the group by the small tower.
He looked down with a curious, contemplative expression. “This,” he said, “must be the body we missed last night.” It was not a flippant speech; it seemed to fit the occasion.
The body lying here, half on the ground, half on the step to the french window, with Miss Lebetwood kneeling on one side, Doctor Aire on the other, was Sean Cosgrove’s. Supine he had fallen, or had been turned, his face bereft of its solidity, a flabby thing, his eyes closed, and the edge of a bloody wound showing beneath his left ear, a wound that apparently had a continuance behind.