The burden which had just been carried up the steep steps leading from the shore was almost beyond the bearers' strength, for the broad door of the Beach Room had been taken off its hinges, and large stones from the shore held down the sheet which covered that which lay on it. An elderly man, well known both to Penelope and to Wantley as John Purcell, the head constable of Wyke Regis, came forward to meet Mrs. Robinson. 'A terrible affair, my lady,' he observed, subdued but eager, for such an event, so interesting from his professional point of view, had never before come his way. 'I wouldn't have anything moved till I'd telegraphed for instructions; but, of course, I didn't stop thinking, and we've sent word all down the coast about that boatload his lordship saw. It's a valuable clue, I should say.' He addressed his words to Penelope, and both he and Wantley believed her to be listening attentively to what was being said. But, after the first moment of recognition of the old constable, she no longer saw him at all, and not to save the life she then held so cheap could she have repeated what he had just said; for she was saying to herself again and again, so possessed by the misery of the thought that it left room for nothing else: 'Why did I go away to-day and leave him? If I had been here, if I had stayed within call of him, he would not have done this thing--he would now have been with me!' But when Purcell dropped his voice she began to hear what he was saying. 'Is there any place downstairs where your lordship could arrange for us to put the body? We had a hard job over those steps, and up to the poor gentleman's room I've a notion they're much worse. I've had to be there two or three times, sealing up everything.' He said it in almost a whisper, but for the first time Mrs. Robinson, hearing, spoke: 'You may take him to the Picture Room,' she said brusquely, 'and then you will not have to go through the hall, for the windows are very wide.' When the signal was given for the men to move on, she first made as if she would have followed them; then, at a touch on her arm from her cousin's hand, she turned away slowly, walking past the studio windows into the garden paths beyond. Wantley followed her, amazed, relieved, bewildered by her self-command, fearing the explanation which must now follow, and yet nervously anxious to get it behind him, while, above all, conscious of a great physical lassitude which made him long to go away and forget everything in sleep. At last, when they were some way from the villa, close to the open down, Penelope turned to him. 'Now tell me,' she said, 'tell me as quickly as you can, what I must know.' And she waited, oppressed, while Wantley once more told the tale he had taught himself to tell, and which had been made perfect by such frequent, such frightful repetition.