“As we left the hospital, Lyle had said to me, 'You must not blame me
for treating him as I did. All is fair in this work, and if by angering
that boy I could have made him commit himself, I was right in trying to
do so; though, I assure you, no one would be better pleased than
myself if I could prove his theory to be correct. But we cannot tell.
Everything depends upon what we see for ourselves within the next few
minutes.'
“When we reached the house, Lyle broke open the fastenings of one of the
windows on the ground-floor, and, hidden by the trees in the garden, we
scrambled in. We found ourselves in the reception-room, which was the
first room on the right of the hall. The gas was still burning behind
the colored glass and red, silk shades, and when the daylight streamed
in after us it gave the hall a hideously dissipated look, like the foyer
of a theatre at a matinee, or the entrance to an all-day gambling-hall.
The house was oppressively silent, and, because we knew why it was
so silent, we spoke in whispers. When Lyle turned the handle of the
drawing-room door, I felt as though someone had put his hand upon my
throat. But I followed, close at his shoulder, and saw, in the subdued
light of many-tinted lamps, the body of Chetney at the foot of the
divan, just as Lieutenant Sears had described it. In the drawing-room we
found the body of the Princess Zichy, her arms thrown out, and the
blood from her heart frozen in a tiny line across her bare shoulder. But
neither of us, although we searched the floor on our hands and knees,
could find the weapon which had killed her.
“'For Arthur's sake,' I said, 'I would have given a thousand pounds if
we had found the knife in her hand, as he said we would.'
“'That we have not found it there,' Lyle answered, 'is to my mind the
strongest proof that he is telling the truth, that he left the house
before the murder took place. He is not a fool, and had he stabbed his
brother and this woman, he would have seen that by placing the knife
near her he could help to make it appear as if she had killed Chetney
and then committed suicide. Besides, Lord Arthur insisted that the
evidence in his behalf would be our finding the knife here. He would not
have urged that if he knew we would NOT find it, if he knew he himself
had carried it away. This is no suicide. A suicide does not rise and
hide the weapon with which he kills himself, and then lie down again.
No, this has been a double murder, and we must look outside of the house
for the murderer.'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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