The following was the day of the inquest. It was to be held at the
Abbey itself, and Mrs. Bean had swept the drawing-room, and uncovered
the furniture in that dismal and damp apartment, so that the coroner
and jury might hold their deliberation there. Freda, who followed the
housekeeper about like her shadow, without acknowledging that it was
because a horror had grown upon her of being left alone in that dreary
old house, was helping to dust the old-fashioned ornaments.
“Mrs. Bean,” she said at last, stopping in the act of dusting the
glass shade over an alabaster urn, in order to clap her hands together
to warm them, “aren’t you going to light a fire here?”
“Yes, I will presently,” answered the housekeeper, whose lips and nose
and hands were purple and stiff with cold.
“It will take a long time to warm this great room, won’t it?”
“Oh, the fire will soon burn up when it’s once lighted.”
However, it didn’t get lighted at all until half an hour before the
coroner and jurymen arrived; and when Mrs. Bean did remember it, she
put in the grate a small handful of newspaper and a few damp sticks
which gave forth smoke instead of heat, and after hissing and
spluttering for some minutes, finally gave up the task of burning
altogether.
Freda stood by the kitchen fire, trying to puzzle out the meaning of
these strange actions, while Mrs. Bean went out into the court-yard at
the summons of the gate-bell. When the housekeeper returned, she met a
gaze from the young girl’s eyes which made her feel uneasy.
“Are they all come?” asked Freda.
“Yes, the coroner and all of them. They’re in the drawing-room now.”
“What are they doing now?”
“First, the coroner will charge them; then the witnesses will be
examined----”
“What witnesses?” asked Freda quickly.
“Why, Crispin and I.”
“Crispin will be examined?”
“Yes,” said Nell sharply, “and so will you, if you don’t keep out of
the way. You’d better go upstairs to your room till they’re out of the
house. They won’t be more than an hour, I should think, at the
outside. I’ll come up and tell you when they’re gone.”
So the girl went slowly out of the room, and across the hall, where
she could hear the deliberate tones of the coroner charging the jury,
and upstairs. But on the landing she stopped, and peeping about to see
that she was not watched, she tried the door of her father’s room,
found that it was locked, and dropping softly on her knees, looked
through the key-hole. The bed was opposite to the door.
The body was no longer there.
Freda sprang up from her knees with a white face, ran through the
picture-gallery, and shut herself up in her own room. She knew very
well that a dead body was not easily moved; half-an-hour ago she had
seen it lying on the bed; Mrs. Bean had not been upstairs since; if
Crispin was about the house still, could he move such a weight by
himself, and carry it down the stairs and out of the house without her
having heard or seen him? She sat on a chair near her window, with her
head between her hands, trying to puzzle out the meaning of these
strange occurrences, until the thought came into her mind that she
might perhaps be able, by secreting herself somewhere on the landing
outside her father’s room, to see the jurymen come up on their
investigations, and to hear what they said. So she came softly out of
the room, and through the picture-gallery, and out on to the wide
landing.
The most desolate spot in the whole house this had always appeared to
Freda. As large as a good-sized room, panelled from oaken floor to
moulded ceiling with a raised recess by the mullioned window, this
might have been made a comfortable as well as handsome corner, while
now it was left to the dust and the rats. So thick was the dust on the
boards that two paths might be traced in it, the one leading to
Captain Mulgrave’s room, the other to the door of the picture-gallery.
Except on these two tracks the dust lay thick, showing the state of
neglect into which the old house had fallen. Freda had often been
struck by this, and had even resolved to steal a broom from Mrs.
Bean’s quarters, and make up herself for the housekeeper’s lack either
of time or of care.
As her glance wandered over the floor as usual this morning, Freda,
therefore, noticed at once that there was a little difference in its
appearance. From her father’s door there was a semi-circular sweep in
the dust towards a little recess on the other side of the head of the
staircase. It looked as if something about two feet wide had been
dragged along the floor. With a loudly beating heart, Freda followed
this track, and reaching the recess, found it to be deeper than she
thought, and quite dark; venturing into it, she found that the boards
rattled under her feet.
At that moment she heard a door open downstairs, and the hum of
several voices, followed by the sound of men’s footsteps crossing the
hall and ascending the staircase. The coroner and jurymen! She could
hear some of the remarks they made to each other in low tones as they
came up the stairs, and she found out, by hearing several questions
addressed to Crispin, that he was among them. She caught fragments of
a good many questions asked about the Captain’s habits and the exact
position in which the body had been found lying; she heard complaints
of the cold and an inquiry why the body had been taken out of the
room. Crispin’s answers were all given in such a low voice that she
could not catch a word of them, but she made out that they satisfied
his interrogators. This part of the business occupied only a very few
minutes, and then they all tramped out and went downstairs again, the
one subject which seemed chiefly to occupy the thoughts of all being
the cold, the bitter cold. Their teeth seemed to chatter as they
talked. Freda, venturing out of her hiding-place, and passing again
over the rattling boards, leaned over the balustrade at the head of
the staircase, and saw Mrs. Bean talking in a respectful manner to the
coroner. He was complaining of having to go out in the snow to the
out-house to view the body.
“Indeed, sir,” said the housekeeper, who seemed to Freda to be very
nervous and excited, “I am very sorry that I had my poor master’s body
moved at all; Crispin and I thought it would be more convenient for
you, for my poor master’s room is, as you saw, so dreadfully crowded
up with his furniture and things.”
“Oh,” returned the coroner, “I’m not blaming you. Of course you did it
for the best. We have the doctor’s certificate, the viewing the body
is merely formal, it will only take a few moments.”
He left her and went out by the front door, following the last two
jurymen. Freda could not see the door from where she stood, but she
heard it close; and she saw the housekeeper, as soon as she was left
quite alone, burst into tears and wring her hands desperately.
“It will be found out, it will be found out!” she moaned.
And still sobbing and drying her eyes upon her apron, Mrs. Bean
hurried back to her own quarters.
Freda’s first impulse was to run after her; but recollecting that the
housekeeper was now more likely than ever to be reticent, she
refrained, and remaining where she was, awaited the return of the
coroner and jurymen in a state of the wildest excitement.
At last she heard the distant sound of voices, and then she heard Mrs.
Bean set ajar the kitchen door to listen. Louder and nearer the voices
came, and then the foremost man opened the front door and tramped in,
followed by the rest.
What had happened? Nothing, apparently, for again the uppermost
thought with the men was the intense cold. They were clapping their
hands, blowing on their fingers, stamping their feet.
“Like an icehouse, that place!” muttered one.
“They could keep the body there all the winter!” said another.
“Ah couldn’t hardly feel ma feet!” added a third.
In the meantime the housekeeper had come out, and greeted them with
outward composure, which astonished Freda and excited her admiration.
“Well, gentlemen, and the verdict I suppose is----”
Somebody interrupted her.
“Hush, hush, my good woman. We haven’t got so far as that yet. You
shall hear all in good time.”
The housekeeper apologised, and the coroner and jurymen returned to
the drawing-room. In a very few minutes they issued forth again,
drawing their mufflers more closely round their necks, and putting on
their hats.
Verdict? Oh, yes, the verdict. It was: That the deceased died from the
effects of a gunshot wound; but by whose hand the weapon was
discharged there was no evidence to show.
Mrs. Bean ushered them out with a decently grave and sad visage. But
when she re-entered the house from the court-yard she was singing like
a lark.
Freda was puzzled. Back to the recess she went, and feeling with her
feet and her crutch very carefully, she soon touched the rattling
boards. Then she dropped upon her knees, lit her candle and passed her
hand over the floor. Two of the boards were loose, she found, and
looking round for something with which to try to raise them, she saw a
flattened iron bar lying close under the wall. Suspecting that this
had been used previously for the same purpose, she proceeded to raise
one of the boards with it. This task easily accomplished, she shifted
the board so as to be able to see underneath it.
Extending to a depth of four feet below the surface of the floor, was
one of those mysterious enclosures between the ceiling of one room and
the floor of the one above, which so often exists in very old houses
to testify to forgotten dangers of persecution and pursuit. It was
dark, close, musty. Freda bent lower and lower, her eyes fixed in
horror on an object at the bottom. Something long, swathed in white:
the body of a dead man.
Freda had begun this search full of suspicion; but the shock was
almost as great as if she had been entirely unprepared for the
discovery of this ghastly secret. She did not scream, although after
the first shock she put her hands before her mouth in the belief that
she had done so. She felt benumbed, stunned. Who was it? She must
look, she must find out, if the discovery killed her. With trembling
hands she picked up her candle, which had fallen and gone out, and
relighting it, peered down at the dead face.
For the first moment she did not recognise it, or death had refined
the coarse outline and effaced the sinister expression. Presently,
however, came full recollection. It was the dead face of the servant
Blewitt.