Part 10 (1/2)

”Thank you,” said Olivia, and then with more animation and interest she added: ”And I suppose I shall want some black clothes.”

”Shall I write to your dressmaker?” said Mr. Manley.

”No, thank you. I shall be able to tell her what I want better myself.”

Mr. Manley withdrew in a pleasant temper. It was true that as a student of dramatic emotion he had been disappointed by the calmness with which Olivia had received the news of the murder; but she had instructed him to do everything he thought fit. He saw his way to controlling the situation, and ruling the Castle till some one with a better right should supersede him. He was halfway along the corridor before he realized that Olivia had asked no single question about the circ.u.mstance of the crime.

Indifference could go no further. But--he paused, considering--was it indifference? Could she--could she have known already?

As he came down the stairs Wilkins opened the door of the big hall, and a man of medium height, wearing a tweed suit and carrying a soft hat and a heavy malacca cane, entered briskly. He looked about thirty. On his heels came a tall, thin police inspector in uniform.

Mr. Manley came forward, and the man in the tweed suit said: ”My name is Flexen, George Flexen. I'm acting as Chief Constable. Major Arbuthnot is away for a month. I happened to be at the police station at Low Wycombe when your news came, and I thought it best to come myself. This is Inspector Perkins.”

Mr. Manley introduced himself as the secretary of the murdered man, and with an air of quiet importance told Mr. Flexen that Lady Loudwater had put him in charge of the Castle till her lawyer came. Then he took the keys of the smoking-room and the library door from his pocket and said:

”I locked up the room in which the dead body is, and the library through which there is also access to it, leaving everything just as it was when the body was found. I do not think that any traces which the criminal has left, if, that is, he has left any, can have been obliterated.”

He spoke with the quiet pride of a man who has done the right thing in an emergency.

”That's good,” said Mr. Flexen, in a tone of warm approval. ”It isn't often that we get a clear start like that. We'll examine these rooms at once.”

Mr. Manley went to the door of the smoking-room and was about to unlock it, when Dr. Thornhill, a big, bluff man of fifty-five, bustled in. Mr.

Manley introduced him to Mr. Flexen; then he unlocked the door and opened it.

The doctor was leading the way into the smoking-room when Mr. Flexen stepped smartly in front of him and said: ”Please stay outside all of you. I'll make the examination myself first.”

He spoke quietly, but in the tone of a man used to command.

”But, for anything we know, his lords.h.i.+p may still be alive,” said Dr.

Thornhill in a somewhat bl.u.s.tering tone, and pus.h.i.+ng forward. ”As his medical adviser, it's my duty to make sure at once.”

”I'll tell you whether Lord Loudwater is alive or not. Don't let any one cross the threshold, Perkins,” said Mr. Flexen, with quiet decision.

Perkins laid a hand on the doctor's arm, and the doctor said: ”A nice way of doing things! Arbuthnot would have given his first attention to his lords.h.i.+p!”

”I'm going to,” said Mr. Flexen quietly.

He went to the dead man, looked in his pale face, lifted his hand, let it fall, and said: ”Been dead hours.”

Then he examined carefully the position of the knife. He was more than a minute over it. Then he drew it gingerly from the wound by the ring at the end of it. It was one of these Swedish knives, the blades of which are slipped into the handle when they are not being used.

”I think that's the knife that lay, open, in the big ink-stand in the library. We used it as a paper-knife, and to cut string with,” said Mr.

Manley, who was watching him with most careful attention.

”It may have some evidence on the handle,” said Mr. Flexen, still holding it by the ring, and he drove the point of it into the pad of blotting paper on which Mr. Manley had been wont to write letters at the murdered man's dictation.

”And how am I to tell whether the wound was self-inflicted, or not?”

cried the doctor in an aggrieved tone.

”If you will get some of the servants, you can remove the body to any room convenient and make your examination. It's a clean stab into the heart, and it looks to me as if the person who used that knife had some knowledge of anatomy. Most people who strike for the heart get the middle of the left lung,” said Mr. Flexen.