VI

In a few words she told her companion. For his part, he was too worried about her presence to comprehend fully.

“You had better get into the car, Leslie. Driver, take Miss Maughan⁠—”

“I’ll stay here,” said Leslie in a low voice. “I’m not very shocked. And please don’t touch that overcoat.”

He was stooping to unfasten the button when she spoke.

“Not till you let me see it.”

Mr. Coldwell hesitated a moment and then stepped aside, and the girl bent over the figure, keeping her eyes averted from that white face.

“I thought so,” she said. “The second button has been fastened to the third buttonhole. Whoever killed him, put on his overcoat and buttoned it. Now you can unfasten it.”

Mr. Coldwell sent the chauffeur for assistance and resumed his examination of the body. The man had been shot at close range through the heart; the waistcoat had been burnt by the explosion. There were no other injuries that he could see. One side of the figure was yellow with dust, as though it had been dragged some distance along the ground.

“I wish you wouldn’t⁠—”

Coldwell looked round in helpless distress. He had taken an electric hand-lamp from the car before he sent it away, and this he had placed on the path so that the rays spread fan-shape over the body.

“Couldn’t you wait at a little distance?”

“Please don’t worry about me, Mr. Coldwell,” said Leslie. There was no tremor in her voice, he noted with satisfaction. “I am not going to faint; you seem to forget that the majority of nurses are women, and death isn’t so horrible to me as some expressions of life. Can I help you at all? I’ve got a tiny little pencil lamp in my bag.”

He scratched his chin.

“I don’t know,” he said dubiously. “You might look in the road and see if you can find any marks of a body being dragged, and then search around a bit.”

She got out the lamp, which, in spite of its smallness, gave a very bright light, and carried out his instructions methodically. She had not to look far before she found the traces she sought⁠—a serpentine smear that reached from the centre of the road to the sidewalk. There were stains, little red smudges that were still wet when she put her finger to them.

The traffic conditions were favourable to an undisturbed search, for the road was unusually free from traffic. One motorbus lumbered past, a homeward-bound limousine from town was succeeded by another, and if the chauffeurs were interested in the spectacle of a man kneeling by what looked like a heap of rags on the sidewalk, the occupants of the cars did not apparently share their curiosity.

She paced the trail, judged it to be between twelve and thirteen feet from the place where the body was found. On the other side of the footpath was rough common land, grass and bushes in irregular patches. She began to search the rough; and here she had an unusual reward, for, passing round a thick low bush, she saw, lying together on the grass, a number of objects. The first was a fat pocketbook that had been opened and its contents pulled out, for round about was a litter of papers, which she collected quickly. Fortunately it was a still night, and there was no wind to carry them away. The second package was a brown envelope, and she made a brief examination.

A steamship ticket issued to “Anthony Druze, 1st Class Saloon, Southampton to New York.” In this envelope was a new passport. The third object was also a pocketbook, brand new⁠—the perfume of the Russian leather cover told her that. This also had been opened, in such a hurry that the strap about it had been broken. It was stuffed tight with thousand-dollar notes.

She collected the three packages and sought for more, but there was none. And then she took stock of the place where she had found them. They were immediately behind a big bush which effectively screened all view of the road. She put her lamp close to the ground and moved it slowly. Here was a curiously mottled patch of grass; in some places it was grey with frost, in others wet and crushed. The ground was too hard for footprints, but without their aid she could reconstruct all that had happened here less than an hour ago. Somebody had come behind this bush to examine the contents of the pockets; the papers had been taken out one by one, examined, and thrown away, and the object had not been robbery. The tightly filled porte-monnaie proved that. It could not have been a chance thief who came upon the body; no honest person would have made this search⁠—it had been somebody looking for a definite thing.

She went back to Coldwell with her discoveries just as the police car came flying over the railway bridge, followed by a motor-ambulance. She told Coldwell hurriedly what she had found, and he was not surprised.

“I’ve been searching his pockets; most of them are inside out,” he said. And then, abruptly: “Where is Peter Dawlish?”

She stared at him open-mouthed.

“Peter Dawlish? What has he got to do⁠—”

And then she remembered Peter’s threat, and saw that it was inevitable that suspicion should attach to him.

“He hadn’t a pistol yesterday,” she said, “and I doubt whether he’s got one now. If Druze had been shot dead in the street I should think he’d be under suspicion, but Peter Dawlish would hardly shoot a man, put him in a car, and drive him to Barnes.”

The old man nodded.

“I agree with you, Leslie; but we shall have to pull him in and make inquiries. Druze has been shot three times; that’s rather a queer thing⁠—and he has been shot through the heart. We shan’t know exactly until the pathologist has seen him, but I think I am right. And, listen, did you see the footprints?”

He pointed to the smooth granite kerb, and she saw for the first time the indubitable impressions of a bare foot⁠—the ball of the foot and toeprints were unmistakable.

He put the three packages Leslie had found in his overcoat pocket.

“Go along and see Lady Raytham, and tell her what has happened. Take this with you, and, for the love of Mike, don’t lose it!”

He put the square emerald in her hand, and she dropped it into her bag.

“If it’s the pendant, as you say, find out what has happened to the rest of the necklace.”

He bundled her into the police car, and she was glad to escape, because by now the large force of police on the spot had been augmented by that curious crowd which sooner or later gathers from nowhere on the scene of any tragedy.

The windows were in darkness when she drove up to the house in Berkeley Square, and, instead of ringing, she wielded the heavy knocker. She had to wait a little time, and then it was a footman who opened the door, and his manner and mien were both respectful and a little nervous.

“Do you want to see her ladyship, miss?” he said. “She’s upstairs with Mrs. Gurden. There is Mrs. Gurden now.”

Greta was coming down the stairs. She was in that peculiar style of evening dress which she affected. Greta made most of her own clothes from the latest Paris models, and usually in the most unsuitable material. Their home-madeness was never blatant. They did not proclaim, but hinted it.

Leslie looked up at the rouged face and the black, staring eyes, and it required no particular acumen on her part to detect Greta Gurden’s agitation.

“Oh, my dear Miss Whatever-your-name-is,” she breathed, “do come up and see dear Lady Raytham. You are Miss What-is-your-name? Maughan, isn’t it? I’m so glad. Druze has been a perfect beast.” She held out her hand dramatically; it was shaking. “You don’t know how glad I am to see you.”

Her eyelids were blinking up and down with a rapidity that fascinated, and would have amused Leslie in any other circumstances.

“What has Druze been doing?” she asked.

“Won’t you come up and see Lady Raytham?” begged Greta. “She’ll tell you so much better than I. My dear Jane can put everything into the most understandable terms. Druze has been simply awful; made a terrible scene and walked out, quite suddenly. It’s dreadful what servants are coming to, isn’t it? I think it must be the war⁠—”

A cool voice from the darkness above interrupted her flow of disjointed explanation.

“Ask Miss Maughan to come up. I want to see her⁠—alone.”

Leslie went up the stairs, and as she reached the first turn she saw that the drawing-room door was open. There was no light on the stairs, save for that which came from the open door. In one corner of the spacious landing she saw a small wheeled table.

She walked in, closing the door behind her. Lady Raytham was standing behind a little table near the fireplace. She wore a dark day dress without ornamentation, and Leslie’s quick woman’s eyes saw that she had changed her stockings; the very fine-textured, flesh-coloured garments she had seen on her earlier that evening, had been replaced by a slightly darker pair. But only for a second did the details of the dress interest her. What a change had come to Jane Raytham’s face! She was made-up; that was clear. The delicate flush of her cheeks was neither natural nor normal in her; she had helped her lips towards a verisimilitude to a healthy red. Her eyes, however, defied all artificial aid; they seemed to have sunk into her head; great dark circles, which even careful powdering could not disguise, surrounded them.

“Have you brought me any news?” she drawled.

It was not like Lady Raytham to drawl.

“I telephoned to you about an hour ago, but unfortunately I could not catch you; on the whole, I think I prefer that a woman officer should deal with this case.”

“Has he stolen anything?” asked Leslie bluntly, and to her amazement Lady Raytham shook her head.

“No, I’ve missed nothing; I shouldn’t imagine he would steal. He may have done, of course; but I shall be able to tell you more about that tomorrow. He was grossly insulting, and left me at a second’s notice.”

“Have you been out?”

“Yes; I went to a dinner with Princess Anita Bellini. We intended going on to the theatre, but I had a headache and decided to return.”

“What time did you come back?” asked Leslie.

Lady Raytham raised her eyes to the ceiling.

“It may have been half-past nine⁠—probably a little earlier,” she said. “We dined at a little restaurant which the Princess knows⁠—”

“And then you came back and had another dinner,” said Leslie steadily. “The table is still on the landing⁠—set for two, so far as I could see.”

For a second the woman was staggered out of self-control. Her hand went up to her lips.

“Oh, that?” she said awkwardly. “My friend, Mrs. Gurden, came later, and⁠—and we gave her some supper.”

Leslie shook her head.

“I wish you would be frank with me, Lady Raytham,” she said. “The truth is, you didn’t go out to dinner at all, did you?”

For a second the woman made no reply.

“I don’t know what I did,” she said.

Between despair and suppressed anger her voice was a wail.

“He drove everything out of my mind⁠—oh, if I had known! If I had known!”

She covered her eyes with her hands, and Leslie heard the sobs she could not stifle.

“What did he say to you before he went?” she asked inexorably.

Lady Raytham shook her head.

“I can’t tell you⁠—he was dreadful, dreadful!”

Leslie had waited this opportunity to fire her shot.

“He is in our hands,” she said. “Shall we bring him here?”

The woman uncovered her eyes and stepped back with a little scream.

“Here? Here?” she said huskily. “My God, not here! He must go to the mort⁠—”

She stopped herself, but too late.

“How did you know he was dead?” asked Leslie sternly.

Under the rouge the woman’s face was grey.