Lewin Murdock is dead, and buried--has been for days. Not in the family
vault of the Wynns, though he had the right of having his body there
laid. But his widow, who had control of the interment, willed it
otherwise. She has repugnance to opening that receptacle of the dead,
holding a secret she may well dread disclosure of.
There was no very searching enquiry into the cause of the man's death;
none such seeming needed. A coroner's inquest, true; but of the most
perfunctory kind. Several habitues of the Welsh Harp; with its staff of
waiters, testified to having seen him at that hostelry till a late hour
of the night on which he was drowned, and far gone in drink. The
landlord advanced the narrative a stage, by telling how he conveyed him
to the boat, and delivered him to his boatman, Richard Dempsey--all true
enough; while Coracle capped the story by a statement of circumstances,
in part facts, but the major part fictitious:--how the inebriate
gentleman, after lying a while quiet at the bottom of the skiff,
suddenly sprung upon his feet, and staggering excitedly about, capsized
the craft, spilling both into the water!
Some corroboration of this, in the boat having been found floating keel
upwards, and the boatman arriving home at Llangorren soaking wet. To
his having been in this condition several of the Court domestics, at the
time called out of their beds, with purpose _prepense_, were able to
bear witness. But Dempsey's testimony is further strengthened, even to
confirmation, by himself having since taken to bed, where he now lies
dangerously ill of a fever, the result of a cold caught from that
chilling _douche_.
In this latest inquest the finding of the jury is set forth in two
simple words, "Drowned accidentally." No suspicion attaches to any one;
and his widow, now wearing the weeds of sombre hue, sorrows profoundly.
But her grief is great only in the eyes of the outside world, and the
presence of the Llangorren domestics. Alone within her chamber she
shows little signs of sorrow; and if possible less when Gregoire Rogier
is her companion; which he almost constantly is. If more than half his
time at the Court while Lewin Murdock was alive, he is now there nearly
the whole of it. No longer as a guest, but as much its master as she is
its mistress! For that, matter indeed more; if inference _may_ be drawn
from a dialogue occurring between them some time after her husband's
death.
They are in the library, where there is a strong chest, devoted to the
safe keeping of legal documents, wills, leases, and the like--all the
paraphernalia of papers relating to the administration of the estate.
Rogier is at a table upon which many of these lie, with writing
materials besides. A sheet of foolscap is before him, on which he has
just scribbled the rough copy of an advertisement intended to be sent to
several newspapers.
"I think this will do," he says to the widow, who, in an easy chair
drawn up in front of the fire, is sipping Chartreuse, and smoking paper
cigarettes. "Shall I read it to you?"
"No. I don't want to be bothered with the thing in detail. Enough, if
you let me hear its general purport."