The Ashiel mystery : $b a detective storyBryce, Marion
General
The Ashiel mystery : $b a detective story
Bryce, Marion
Detective and mystery stories; Fiction
"Oh, not far, but it had been touched by some one, I am ready to swear,
though I said nothing about it at the time. When we first found him, he
was lying forward on the table with one arm under his head and the other
hanging beside him. When I went in for the second time he was sitting
sideways in his chair with his head and arm in quite a different place.
Instead of being in the middle, on the blotting-pad, they were further to
the right, on the bare polished wood."
Gimblet looked at him keenly.
"You are perfectly certain of this?" he said.
"Absolutely. Besides, you can ask Miss Byrne and Blanston. They both saw
him as he was at first. And the police and Dr. Duncan can tell you what
his position was when they went into the room. I said nothing about it
to any of them, because I thought at once that it must be David who had
been there."
"Why did you think that?"
"Because he knew where the key was. I took it out of my pocket when we
were alone in the smoking-room before going up to bed, and asked him what
I should do with it.
"'Oh, put it in a drawer,' he said, pointing to the writing-table, and I
put it there, as he suggested. Of course I see now that some one else may
have found the key in that drawer, but at first it did look as if David
must, for some reason, have taken it, and been in the library, after I'd
gone to bed."
"It seems very unlikely that anyone else would have hit on the place
where you had put it," said Gimblet reflectively. "And if they had
done so, would they have recognized the key? Is the library key
peculiar in any way?"
"It is rather an uncommon pattern," said Mark. "It is very old and
strong. I think anyone who knew the key would have recognized it
all right."
"It is hardly likely that anyone would have found it if they had had to
search all through the house for it in the middle of the night,"
commented Gimblet. "Is there no other way of getting into the library?"
"No, there is only one door."
"How about the window? It was broken; could not anyone have put in a
hand, or raised the sash?"
"I don't think anyone could have got in. It isn't a sash window. There
are stone mullions and small leaded casements in the old part of the
castle where the library is, and I doubt if anyone larger than a child
could squeeze through; in fact, a child couldn't; there are iron bars
down the middle, which make it too narrow."
"H'm," murmured Gimblet. "I should like to have a look at them. And what
was the doctor's report?"
"He said that the injuries to the heart were such that death must have
been instantaneous, or practically so."
"Did anything else come out?"
"Nothing, except the evidence against poor old David, I'm sorry to say."
"You haven't told me that yet," said Gimblet. "Go on from when the police
arrived on the scene."
"As soon as it was daylight we started off again on our search. But right
at the beginning of it, they came upon the footsteps."
"Ah, where were they?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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