"Now, going back to that phrase of Miss Charteris's about wishing that she were dead. Did she say it lightly, petulantly? You understand what I mean? Or did she say it as though she were in some great trouble?"
The maid hesitated. "Sort of impatient. Sort of frightened, too, though."
And the coroner could not shake her conviction that it had been fear which she had felt, or divined, in her young mistress, any more than he could her certainty that Rose had not been wearing her string of amethysts when she last saw her.
Mr. Gilchrist shot his lips out and pulled the papers towards him again. He glanced at Colonel Scarlett, who sat listening avidly, the air of composure gone with which he had entered the room.
"Well, well! Just the young lady's way of talking, I take it."
"Oh, no, sir! Miss Rose had had a warning. She had been frightened, underneath all her way of carrying it off. She had been frightened!"
Sensation.
"Now to pass on to other things—had the bed been slept in when you went into the room next morning?"
The question caused a stir, but the answer was explicit. It had.
Sibella and Mrs. Lane were next called. Sibella first. Their evidence was practically identical.
Sibella had not seen Rose after dinner. Rose was frequently out in the evenings, with friends, or in town at play, or concert, or meeting. As to her strange words to her maid, Sibella professed to have no key, except that apparently some little trifle had gone amiss. There was nothing really worrying her cousin. On the contrary. Rose seemed to her particularly happy and contented that last day, Thursday. Just for a second her eye met Thornton's. Just for a second they fell. As to any letter for which the maid thought that her cousin might have been looking last night, Sibella could not hazard a guess. Rose had a great many letters. She generally tore them up at once, unless they were business matters. She had her own friends, as well as her father's friends, many of whom were quite apart from the Scarlett circle. She could not explain how Rose came to be wearing Thursday's evening frock on Friday's early morning sketching expedition, even though it was under an outdoor dress.
Count di Monti was next called. Those present who expected an outbreak of Italian passion were disappointed. The Count looked as impassive as a meditating Bonze.
"You were, I think, engaged to Miss Charteris?"
"Yes. It was to be announced on the return of her father."
"I may take it that there was no, eh, hitch—of any kind?"
A rustle ran through the hall.
"In our engagement? Oh, none whatever."
As to when he had last seen Rose, di Monti replied that he had said good-bye to her at Stillwater about six. He had an important engagement in town that evening, or he would have stayed and gone on with her to a concert which was being given in Medchester. She had said that as he was not going, she did not care to go either.
There was a movement of sympathy at this announcement. But di Monti's arrogant gaze roamed the hall without softening. If it lingered for a second on one face, only a very keen observer noticed it. If Sibella felt it on her, she gave no sign.
"Can you suggest any meaning, any point to those words Miss Rose used to her maid last Thursday, night?"
Di Monti could not. But he had often heard Rose use just such expressions many times before, about the merest trifles.
As to the beads which Rose had been wearing, or was supposed to have been wearing when she met with her death, di Monti absolutely scouted the idea that they could have tempted any tramp to murder her for their sake.
He seemed, indeed, so anxious to minimise their value that Pointer looked at him curiously. Even to the pendant, he refused to allow any interest, intrinsic or sentimental, to be attached, though he acknowledged that it was a present to her from his father.
Then came the great sensation.
Doctor Metcalfe was called. He was very honest. He said at once that he had been mistaken in his first impression as to the cause of Miss Charteris's death. He had assumed, too quickly, as he now knew, that that cause was a fall into the sand-pit on to some stones. Fortunately another medical man from his aid hospital who had chanced to drop in for a casual chat had heard of the death, and had been struck by one or two of the details.
A swab taken by them both from the cut in the head showed earth, but no sand. The superficial sand first noted was only on the surface of the hair.
It was for this reason that he had withheld the death certificate, and had decided that it was his painful duty to hold an autopsy, which had taken place that morning.
He passed around a swab to the coroner which had been taken from the cut.
A low murmur of amazement swept through the hall. Pointer's eyes were on the little knot of faces seated almost in front of him. Colonel Scarlett was staring at the doctor with a look which even the Scotland Yard expert could not decipher. He showed no emotion, yet there was a something about his mouth that spoke of tension, great but controlled. Mrs. Lane might have been an ivory statue, as she leant far back in her chair. Sibella's eyes shone like green lamps. She looked, not at the doctor, but just once at di Monti, and then resolutely down at her clasped hands Pointer could almost feel the effort she was making to keep them fastened there—in safety.
The doctor realised the sensation which he had created "I deeply regret to make such a statement. Had I been able to reach you, sir, yesterday, on the 'phone, or Colonel Scarlett as the nearest relative, I would have let you know."
Superintendent Harris, very red in the face, hastily scribbled a line and passed it to the coroner.
"The police would be obliged if you would adjourn the inquest."
The coroner nodded. But he found that to stem the doctor just then would have meant carrying him bodily out of the building. He submitted, he insisted on submitting that Miss Charteris had been killed by a single blow from such a weapon as, for instance, a sharp-edged cudgel. There had been no struggle. Death had been instantaneous. There was a tear in the back of her dress where it must have caught on a branch as she fell among the trees in the copse. The force of the blow had broken her neck. Then her body had been thrown into the sandpit close at hand.
On this second examination, made in company with his learned colleague, he had found, lying beside the body on the bed at Stillwater House, some twigs and leaves from her relaxed fingers. These, too, he passed to the coroner, who was sitting without a jury.
The presence of these leaves proved, the doctor pointed out, that it was in the copse that the actual murder had taken place, for in the pit there were no trees or shrubs. And there was one thing more which the doctor could not be prevented from saying, and that was, that he was by no means sure of the time of her death. It was possible, or rather probable, that it had taken place earlier by far than he had at first assumed. Certain indications, indeed suggested considerably before, rather than after, midnight.
But this was going too far, and the coroner adjourned the inquest in the middle of the doctor's next sentence. Doctor Metcalfe's "learned colleague" tapped Pointer on the shoulder after the inquest.
"My car's outside," he said in a low tone; "come along."
Pointer came along. The doctor whizzed into a quiet street.
"Did it go to your liking?" he asked gleefully.
Pointer gave him a reproachful look.
"Letting all the cats out of the bag at one bound," he complained. "I can still hear them yodelling."
"That was Doctor Metcalfe's doing. Look here, Pointer"—Doctor Scott was one of the divisional surgeons of New Scotland Yard—"I deserve a treat