A face, with lips, nose, eyelids, cheeks distended into a simple green sphere—and a hand, its palm covered with thickened, white, and sodden skin.
Sir Brooke Mortimer was found.
I was far too late, of course, to hear what had been said by those first around the hole. I learned afterwards. Crofts Pendleton, barring some natural repugnance to the body in process of dissolution, had seemed to take a sullen joy in the discovery.
“Here’s your murderer!” he had even cried.
“No, no! Never!” Eve Bartholomew murmured, gave a slight shriek, and fainted dead away, to be carried by stalwart persons into the Hall.
“I wonder,” said Belvoir.
“Of course not,” declared Miss Lebetwood, and challenged Doctor Aire: “Isn’t that so?”
“Yes,” he answered; “he’s been dead at least as long as Sean.”
The Guelder Rose plant, which must have a new hole dug for it now, lay alongside the cavity with its branches bound up and its root encased in a bag. Beside the rose lay the body of the unfortunate Knight, drawn from the mysterious water-channel. I should not have recognized it, had it been the corpse of some friend of mine.
Mastering the disgust that welled in me, I bent over the drawn face, with its nostrils dilated and eyes forced forward from their sockets. The dead lips were parted and the blackened tip of the tongue protruded between the teeth.