"Miss Winter?" Sibella said, as though miles away. "Oh, yes, of course, Mrs. Seymour's cousin."
"Yes, the head mistress of Biswell. She and Mr. Seymour practically lived together. She's abroad, unfortunately, just now. But I wired her at once, as soon as I saw the statement in the papers, and she wired back that she had never heard the name of Lane, and that her cousin never had a companion."
"Surely we don't need to discuss this now? There might be a truce to-day? All such things seem so petty." Sibella spoke very low.
"But in view of Rose's having been murdered, Sib, darling, every moment may be of value. The woman may try to run away. You don't know who she is. Your father is such a good sort that he would never suspect anything wrong. Rose never liked her."
"I know, but—" Sibella seemed to have no strength to waste in argument. "Oh, well, let us get it over it then. What is it you want to do?"
"I don't want anything," Lady Maxwell spoke with some acerbity, "but I think the police should be told at once that the reference is false—" The door into the hall was standing open. The colonel appeared with telegram in his hand.
"Bellairs says he can't—" He stopped at sight of the woman talking to his daughter. He tried to back noiselessly away, but Lady Maxwell called him. Apparently the colonel did not hear her, for the door of the study shut very swiftly, but not before the watcher outside saw the look of alarm that was on it. The visitor, with a murmured word of apology or explanation, rose and went after him.
Sibella paid no heed. She sat with her forehead leaning on her hand, her eyes closed.
A minute later and Mrs. Lane came in. She was very pale, with purple shadows around her eyes. Coming across to the girl, she put her arm around the slender shoulders.
"Sibella, my dear, I thought you would be here alone. I want to say—" Her, voice was very gentle, but Sibella jumped to her feet, her long, black gloves falling to the floor.
"Oh! They're bringing her—IT—down the stairs! Talk to me! Talk to me! For God's sake don't let me hear the sound of those heavy steps! Don't!"
She grasped Mrs. Lane's arm, trembling violently. Mrs. Lane, too, looked as though she were all but fainting. Pointer thought that only a very unusual will kept her upright on her feet. Her face was green white. Her breath came in little gasps. In silence the two women inside the room, and Pointer outside, heard the heavy tramp and scuffle as the top of the stairs were turned.
Sibella fell back into her chair.
"Rose! Rose, who always ran down them!" She was almost writhing as she put her fingers into her ears. Mrs. Lane hid her face in her hands.
There came a sudden, loud peremptory knock at the door.
It was the coffin, one corner of which struck it in turning.
Sibella's head and shoulders plunged forward. She was in a dead faint, and Mrs. Lane looked as though one straw more would break her.
Lady Maxwell returned. There were tears in her eyes. She had met the men at their task. The lady-housekeeper waited till she bent over Sibella. Then she felt for the door-knob as though unable to see it.
Di Monti almost collided with her as he stepped in hastily. He was obviously, giving the undertaker's men more room. The strange thing was that he stepped in with a look of fierce satisfaction on his face. It vanished as he helped Lady Maxwell lay the girl on the sofa.
"All the better if she doesn't hear them carry the coffin out of doors. Though it's really quite absurd. Giving way like this. It isn't as if they had been fond of each other. But Sib always was one to let her feelings run off With her. Now she's coming to." Lady Maxwell spoke as one who had scant sympathy with weakness.
"You are mistaken, Lady Maxwell," di Monti said in his most formal manner, "I happen to know that Miss Rose was very fond of Miss Sibella indeed. These last days especially."
"I shouldn't overdo it, if I were you," was the lady's caustic and rather surprising reply.
Di Monti looked as though he had been struck. His eyes flashed, his face crimsoned. His upstanding top-locks quivered. But he only bowed, and at that moment Pointer had to move away from the window, for Paul was looking for him.
Pointer's mind as he drove in the funeral cortège was with the two women whom he had watched in such a convulsion of feeling.
Each felt herself guilty. Was it only in some measure, or in full measure? A good deal would depend on temperament. But even allowing for the most highly strung nerves—and both Sibella and Mrs. Lane possessed that doubtful blessing, there was more here than they would explain. Some knowledge, some fact, some deed, lay behind such emotion. Of that Pointer was sure.
The afternoon of Rose Charteris's funeral was a marvel of song and bloom and scent. It was the May of the poets, of bud-swollen branches and filmy green leaves. The pink of the crab apple trees around the old churchyard showed up in spaced beauty against the wild cherries. The blackthorns reached their snowy arms, beginning to look a little ragged, from out the beautiful young green of their cousins, the hawthorns, whose blossoms were only a promise, a closely-kept secret, as yet.
The pale-green bud clusters of the hollies were just tinging into white, but a cloud of their blue butterflies—symbol and warning—swept past the mourners' faces like a delicate smoke wreath, on the first flight of their lives. A thrush sang a wonderful song as they lowered the body of Rose into the earth to which it was to return.
The service affected the men officially engaged in the hunt very keenly. There was not one who did not swear to himself a vow—by that bole in the ground, by that oblong box—to do his utmost to see that the murderer paid.
After Colonel Scarlett had dropped the first earth on to the coffin, di Monti stepped forward. From his handful came a rattle that made the clergyman peer over his prayer-book. Some stones must have got picked up as well. Di Monti did not seem to have heard them, as, with bent head, he stood beside Scarlett, a picture of mourning.
CHAPTER SIX
POINTER had a short talk with Lady Maxwell after the funeral, but he learnt nothing fresh. She repeated her doubts about Mrs. Lane, and the fact that the colonel, when she had felt it her painful duty to speak to him on the point just now, had said that his lady housekeeper was too efficient to lose, and that if there were any mistake, it was his. He must have confused two Mrs. Seymours.
The object of the lady's suspicions was sitting very quietly in the arm-chair into which she had sunk on her return from church.
After a long time spent in thought, she walked down-stairs and into the study. The colonel, too, was sitting staring into space.
On seeing her he rose abruptly, and with a look of caution went to the door and shut it again to make sure that it was caught.
"Does she suspect anything? Lady Maxwell, I mean?" he whispered "Paul's downstairs. Those damned police are off the premises for once. Does she know anything?" he repeated irritably.
"Nothing, I think, except that I was never a companion to a Bishop's widow."
For a second Scarlett stared at her, as though she had spoken in some foreign tongue.
"Oh!" he said at last, "you mean your reference? Well, I had, to say something when the police sprang the question on me. But was that—"
She