"She's quite dead."
Bond touched it too. It was as stiff as a piece of ivory.
"I'll fetch a doctor." He bounded off as though time still had a meaning for that which lay behind him.
Cockburn took up the watch beside the shell of Rose. The sound of steps walking slowly along the road reached him. He clambered out of the pit and saw Thornton coming around a bend.
The neighbourhood seemed to keep exemplary hours. As a rule, "Bond and Co." had their morning dips and runs to themselves.
"What's the time?" Cockburn called. Then coming nearer as Thornton replied, "Six," he went on, "Miss Charteris has fallen down the sand-pit here. She's quite dead. Bond and I've just come upon her. Frightful to see her lying there."
"Dead! Miss Charteris dead!"
Glancing at him, Cockburn noticed how gray his face had grown.
Bond came running back.
"Medico's coming along at once."
A raucous horn sounded, and a two-seater stopped beside a clump of trees some yards from the path. "Morning everybody! Surely there's some mistake. Miss Charteris—" The doctor had looked into the pit. He left his sentence unfinished. Turning, he replaced his little black bag with a shake of his head, and made his way down.
"Shocking thing to've happened." He got up from beside the dead girl "She's been dead for hours. It's criminal to leave places like this unfenced. Well, I suppose we shall get our railings—now! She must have stepped off the path right over the edge. I'd better be getting along to Stillwater House to break the news. Poor—"
"Morning, gentlemen!" said a brisk voice, with a hint of breathlessness in it. The Medchester superintendent of police was not as young as he had been. "I met a young gentleman down the road—oh, there you are, sir!" This to Bond. "Ay, that's our Miss Charteris right enough. Not much chance of mistaking her for any one else." His eye took in professionally but sympathetically the still young figure and the oddly bent head "What a terrible thing to've happened. No need to ask if she's dead."
"Neck's broken. She must have gone too near the edge and fallen over."
"When do you think it happened, sir?"
But the doctor was too young a man to set an hour by the old-fashioned clock of rigor mortis, or temperature. He shook his head.
"Some hours ago evidently. Apparently on an early sketching expedition She's got her little outfit with her." He picked up the japanned box as he spoke.
"Has she now?" The superintendent looked more shocked than ever. "Ah, here's Briggs. Blest if he hasn't brought the broken stretcher. I'd best go back with him."
"We'll leave you to come on with the body, superintendent. But how about my car? She only holds two."
"Bond and Co." at once offered to wait for the stretcher.
"Then shall I give you a lift, Mr. Thornton? This has been a great shock even to me, and a doctor's used to death."
Thornton thanked him, and after arranging with the two friends to breakfast at Red Gates, got in.
"Sad case!" The doctor, a fair, chubby young man, started the engine at last. "Going to be married to that Italian staying down at the Medchester Arms, I understand. Though I seem to remember something about her having been as good as engaged to Bellairs, the artist, and that it was only the count's huge fortune that tipped the scale. But if one believed all one hears!"
Thornton gave his usual, non-committal nod.
"Her father's against the marriage with the count. Quite right, too," the doctor went on. "Very clever man, Professor Charteris. He was talking to me about a synthetic-emerald company which he's going to start, on the links the other day. I mean, he was talking on the links, not going to start making 'em there." The doctor checked his laugh. "This will be a terrible blow to him. And to the ladies up at Stillwater. At least—I dunno. She and Miss Sibella weren't supposed to get on over well together lately. But you know how wide of the mark idle chatter of that kind often is. I really hope for once, though, that there may be something in it. It'll break this blow, a bit."
"I had no idea there had been any ill-feeling between the two girls," Thornton murmured truthfully. He felt like a man, rather proud of his sight, who tries on a stranger's eyeglasses, and finds his field of vision trebled.
"Of course, I don't know anything about it—I never pay attention to gossip, but they're said to've been at daggers drawn for some time past. Some say over the legacy, and some over the way Miss Charteris turned down young Bellairs before it was known how his mother was going to leave her money—after she married again, you know. I think it was over the legacy myself. Well, Miss Scarlett'll have it all now. She little thought it would come to her so quickly. But of course, if what people hint is true, and it's to do with the count! Both the girls had that hot Italian blood in them, you know. Old blood. Too old. Give me a nice English girl or woman—like Mrs. Lane, now. There's a woman for you! Nerves of steel."
"Indeed!" Thornton said politely, looking bored.
"Lots more in her than you'd think. Wonderfully taking young woman, too. I had to set a sprained wrist for her once. The rumour runs that she only has to lift her little finger to be Mrs. Scarlett the second, for all she's young enough to be the colonel's daughter. But I make a point of never listening to tittle-tattle."
"Oh?"
"Can't as a medical man, you know. Quite impossible."
There followed a little break in the impossible.
"Do you know when the professor's coming back?" Thornton thought that amid such a flood of information that item might well be washed up.
"I? Not the faintest notion! How should I have? But there's an idea about that he's off for Verona to see if a law-suit can't be avoided by a friendly settlement out of court. If you ask me, I should say that he's much more likely to see if the engagement, or whatever it is, can't be stopped. As for expecting any family, however rich, to hand over land, that's always rather a pill, isn't it? And so's my breaking the news here."
The doctor's car clanked noisily up the drive. Thornton saw one of the curtains on an upper floor twitched a little to one side. Nothing was visible of the face looking out except a pair of eyes. They were so nearly level with the window ledge that their owner must be stooping or kneeling. The strange thing was the expression in them.
Thornton called his companion's attention to something on the other side of the gardens, as they stopped with a grinding clash that would have disturbed the driver of a donkey-engine, but which left the doctor unruffled.
He himself walked on past the house. He took quite a turn in the grounds, before returning to his cottage. Mrs. Bennet, she of last night's narrow escape, was setting the breakfast table. One glance at her and he saw that she knew of the accident.
"Oh, sir, the poor young lady's just arrived! The poor young thing! To think that I warned her only last week about that path. 'Miss Rose,' I said, 'don't you believe Miss Sibella that it's so much shorter, or, if it is, it's dangerouser.' But there!"
A light knock interrupted her. It was "Bond and Co.," and a very quiet breakfast followed. Mrs. Bennet's cooking conduced to silent meals, but it was not the reason this time. When the three men had lit their pipes, they strolled out into the garden. Another silence fell. Each seemed deep in thoughts that he was in no hurry to share. As usual, it was Bond who took the lead.
"You know, I'm not quite easy in my mind," he said at last in a low tone, "not at all easy! No, I'm dashed if I am!"
"Easy about what?" Thornton asked after a pause
Bond jerked his head towards the house. "Frightful end to come to a lovely girl like that, and Heaven knows I don't want to make bad worse. Yet—well, I'm not easy in my mind. There was something about the way she lay in that sand-pit. I can't put a name to it, but there was. Look here, I'm going