The Greatest Murder Mysteries - Dorothy Fielding Collection. Dorothy Fielding

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СКАЧАТЬ Yard man's look of energy and poise impressed the critic. Thornton decided that to start him would be one thing, to stop him quite another.

      The first of the surprises came when Rose's maid deposed that she had only that morning noticed that her young mistress was wearing another dress under the knitted silk frock. What had been taken for a loose lining was the peach-coloured evening dress that she had worn on Thursday night for dinner. A few amethyst beads had tumbled out as she shook the dress to rights. The frock was very thin, low-necked, and sleeveless, and could easily pass for a petticoat slip. But the shoes were the kind that Miss Charteris always wore with the knitted dress, of stout gray buckskin with low heels. Her stockings, too, were of a gray ribbed silk that only suited the outer frock.

      The maid did not know when her young mistress had left the house, but she had last seen her about ten on Thursday night. Miss Rose had then been dressed as she was when found. She had not been wearing her beads. Miss Rose had been examining some letters in her writing-desk.

      "Examining? What do you mean by that?" asked the coroner.

      "She had her writing-desk open, sir, and was turning them over and over, as though there were one there she couldn't find. I heard her murmur, 'Where can I have put it? What can I have done with it?' But I don't think she rightly knew what she was doing at the moment."

      "What do you mean?"

      "Miss Rose looked that anxious and upset, sir. She wasn't really looking at the papers at all. I've never seen her like that before."

      "Like what?" asked the coroner impatiently.

      "Like she was then," replied the witness helpfully. "She looked to me, Miss Rose did, as though she had had a warning." The maid dropped her voice.

      "A warning?" snapped the coroner. "A warning of what?"

      "Of her coming death," breathed the woman. "Oh, she looked beautiful, sir. I've never seen even her such a pitcher. But when I asked her if there was anything more as I could do, she stared at me as though she didn't understand, and said she wished she were dead."

      "Eh? You asked Miss Charteris if you could do anything more for her, and she replied—what?"

      "Just what I said, sir. She said to me, she said, 'I wish I were dead!'"

      The legal mind gave it up.

      "And you?"

      "I said to her, 'Whatever is the matter, miss?' And she said to me, impatient, 'Oh, nothing—just everything!' And then I said to her, I said, 'Has anything gone wrong, miss?' And she looked at me, as she sometimes would, half-laughing, with her head thrown back, and a little to one side—oh, she looked a lovely pitcher!—'Everything, Maud, and nothing! What's the time?' I told her, 'Just gone ten,' and she says to me, 'Ten already!' Then she gave me a look as though she wanted to be alone, so I said good-night to her, and closed the door. And I never saw her alive again." The woman wiped the tears away.

      "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 СКАЧАТЬ