The Greatest Murder Mysteries - Dorothy Fielding Collection. Dorothy Fielding

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СКАЧАТЬ but I'll find a seat farther back. We can meet in the lobby afterwards, if not before."

      Sibella stopped the car. Mrs. Lane, got out and shut the door. She went on into the shop, looking as though the arrangement suited her too excellently. Sibella waited a moment, then turned the car, and pressed the accelerator. Like a bird she darted away through the evening light. The concert was from nine to eleven o'clock. It was over when Mrs. Lane, waiting in the little portico, saw Sibella again. She was coming out with an elder woman, who was laughing at something that the girl was saying.

      "Wasn't it splendid?" Sibella turned away to Mrs. Lane. "But I thought they took that Third Movement much too fast. It's a mistake to try and copy Kussevitsky's tempo."

      They were out on the steps now. Their car was parked to one side. As they walked to it, a lad ran up.

      "Miss Scarlett! Miss Scarlett!"

      Sibella turned.

      "Oh, it's our newspaper boy. Well, Tommy?"

      "Your handkerchief, miss. You dropped it just now when you ran into the hall." He held out a wisp of lawn.

      "Thank you. But hardly just now,'" Sibella said in a laughing aside to her companion.

      Mrs. Lane gave her one of her thoughtful, considering looks.

      It almost seemed to her that the girl was rouged. And that her eyes shone like fire-flies in the dark of the night, but again she made no comment.

      Bond looked up from his cards to say heartily, "This is better than a stuffy concert hall, what?"

      He, Cockburn, and Colonel Scarlett were playing bridge with Thornton in the latter's cottage.

      Suddenly there came an interruption. Cockburn, who was dummy, and like every other dummy, took a turn through the gardens while the hand was being played, stuck his head hurriedly through one of the long, open windows.

      "I say! I heard a rifle shot over in the lane. Come on, you fellows! Let's see what's wrong."

      The interruption was most welcome to Thornton, who had allowed himself to be goaded into calling four hearts, and had been left to rustle for them with the help of a Yarborough. He happened to glance at the colonel as he jumped up. So did Cockburn. Both men saw a look of fear leap into Scarlett's eyes, and saw him crush it down as he might have a dangerous spark as he, too, made for the door.

      "Where did it come from?" asked Bond, hard on his friend's heels.

      "Somewhere over the other side of the orchard. I—" Cockburn fell sprawling into a flower bed—"shouldn't wonder if it's a row between some poachers and a keeper."

      As he picked himself up, he turned towards the colonel, whose feelings about poachers were well known.

      "Or Mrs. Viney's pug burst at last," Bond called back, as the colonel made no reply. "She lives across there."

      They found the lane deserted, but Cockburn insisted on searching every foot of road and hedge, till they worked around to the main gates of Stillwater again.

      "There's nothing to catch here except a wetting. A downpour is coming." The colonel seemed to have suddenly regained his good humour.

      In the face of such matter-of-factness the excitement simmered down, and after a few more unanswered shouts, and the first heavy drops of rain, some one suggested a rush to the garage close by, and a general clean-up.

      Wilkins was out, but the pump, a towel, and a little petrol repaired all damages, and chaffing the cause of the disturbance, the men returned to finish the rubber, which lasted so late that Thornton insisted on putting "Bond and Co." up for the night, since the colonel still had no suggestions to make.

      CHAPTER TWO

       Table of Contents

      THE day after the concert was one of those wonderful spring mornings, when even the dullest man feels his kinship with the fields, and the birds, and the play of shine and shadow.

      Across the grass of Medchester Common, which stretched in a sheet of clearest green, for its leopard skin of daisy and buttercup was still to come, ran Bond, with Cockburn several yards behind him. Both men were in running kit. Once, the man in the rear stopped, and called out something. But as he regularly recorded some injury every hundred yards or so, which necessitated a halt, Bond only laughed and ran on.

      This time, however, an exclamation followed which made Bond wheel. The other was staring with bulging eyes and dropped jaw into a sand-pit just off the path. The look on his face made his friend come sprinting back.

      "What's wrong? What's up?"

      Cockburn only pointed, and Bond, following the direction of his hand, felt his own muscles slacken.

      "Good God!" he breathed. Then, with a "Here! There must be a way down!" he ran around the pit, and together they slithered to the bottom, where lay the body of Rose Charteris.

      She was quite dead. Her face, serene and beautiful, upturned to the periwinkle deeps above her. And compared with the utter stillness of it, the sky seemed a turmoil, the clouds a fighting army.

      It was unmarred by any injury, but it lay appallingly far over one shoulder. Only a broken neck could take that position.

      Cockburn picked up one little clenched hand. His reverent manner told again what both men knew.

      "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 СКАЧАТЬ