They waited.
A second knock.
“Possibly she can’t hear us knocking from the bedroom,”
Jago suggested.
Vibart turned the handle and they went into the first room of the suite, the sitting room. It was in perfect order.
“Isabel!” Vibart called. The plaint of the dogs must have drowned any reply. He knocked twice on the closed door of her bedroom. “Isabel!”
No reply.
He turned the handle of the door and peered in. Jago stood back.
From Vibart’s throat came a low moan, almost matching the chorus of the dogs. He closed the door, his face ashen.
“What is it?” said Jago.
Vibart lurched to a chair. With a movement of the head he indicated that Jago should look for himself.
He opened the door.
The section of the room opposite the casement window was lit by the near-silver sun, low-angled behind the elms outside. So before the total scene could make an impression, the eye was fixed by details, surfaces of cut glass and mother-of-pearl-powder jars and hair brushes on the dressing table-that scintillated through the full range of the spectrum. The brass work of the bedstead, too, was highlighted, so that it required a conscious focal effort to look beyond it to the dazzling ocean of bed linen and the island of almost dry blood in which Isabel Vibart lay.
Death had deprived her of one kind of beauty, but invested her with another. She lay across the sheets obliquely in a white embroidered night chemise torn from collar to waist, revealing a cluster of stab wounds in the region of the heart. They had bled heavily. Without its vanities, jewellery, hairpins, corsets, all-enveloping dress, her body was graced by a naturalness Jago had never seen in a woman. The pure sunlight glowing on the statuesque limbs-whyever did such beauty have to be concealed through life? — banished even the suggestion of immodesty.
Her deep-brown hair, loose and luxuriant, was drawn from her face to trail over the edge of the bed so that its ends touched the carpet. Near that point on the floor was a white peignoir trimmed with lace and ribbons. The murderer had used it to wipe the excess of blood from his hands and knife.
Jago felt himself trembling; whether from shock or anger, he did not know. Neither reaction was desirable in a policeman, and his training urged him to approach this situation professionally. But could one even begin to treat this as a “case,” a set of circumstances to be analyzed on deductive principles? His personal involvement, his revulsion at such violence, held him absolutely. Isabel was murdered, and until his brain could absorb that stupefying fact, it was no good playing at being a detective.
Vibart, re-entering the bedroom from behind Jago, broke through his reverie. “You can see why he did this.”
He was pointing to the open door of a small safe, set in the wall to their right. It was empty. The key was still in the lock.
“The money,” Vibart explained. “Beckett handed her five hundred pounds last night. Five hundred! What a price for Isabel’s life!”
“What do you mean?” Jago asked. “Are you saying you know who did this?”
“Isn’t it obvious? Morgan killed her. He hated her anyway, but he killed her for the money. He was out of the room last night for half an hour or more. Didn’t you see the bundle he brought back afterwards? There must have been blood on his clothes and hands. He wore the dressing gown to kill her and carried it away with him afterwards. Knife, money, bloodstained hands-they were all hidden in that bundle.”
Jago’s faculties were beginning now to function professionally. The situation, he realized, placed him in an appalling dilemma. He could admit at once to being a policeman and take command until a senior officer could be fetched; but that could expose and destroy Cribb’s entire investigation into the dead pugilists. Or he could continue in his masquerade, possibly gaining privileged information as the others reacted to the new circumstances; that, he well knew, might lead to an unanswerable investigation into his conduct as an officer. For the present, he would delay the decision.
“We must tell D’Estin,” he said. “Then one of us should go for the police.”
“The police?” repeated Vibart in disbelief. “You must be mad! Do you think they can help her now, coming here to turn the blasted place upside-down and bring us all into court?”
“I wasn’t thinking,” said Jago. “Those dogs outside-I can’t concentrate for their howling. Can you get them away from the house? I’ll rouse D’Estin.” He would gain time, perhaps fifteen minutes, while Vibart returned them to the lodge. Before he went to D’Estin, he would examine the room alone; that was exactly what he would do if he were a uniformed investigator.
“Very well,” said Vibart. “What got them into this state, do you think?”
“The smell of blood,” said Jago. “An open window.
Warm sun. Any hunting dog would have got the scent. Take them away at once, can’t you?”
“I’ll get some clothes on,” Vibart agreed, and went off to his room.
In his role as sleuth, Jago approached the bed and touched the largest bloodstain. It was practically dry.
Controlling his emotions now, he bent to examine the stab wounds. He was no expert, but they told him the murder weapon was broad-bladed, and had been thrust into the flesh with great force five times. There was also bruising on the throat and left shoulder, suggesting she had been held down by the nonstriking hand. Her hands were unmarked, the fingernails unbroken; she had not had a chance to fight.
He looked around the room. The silk dress she had worn the previous evening was hanging on the side of the wardrobe, the folds arranged to prevent creasing. On a painted satinwood chair nearby the other garments had been put to air, the underskirt draped across the arms, the corset, black like the rest, over the back. The stockings and garters lay unseparated near the boots on the floor, but it was clear enough from the arrangement of the rest that Isabel had not been disturbed before getting into bed. Nor had she got up to admit her murderer; even a woman as unreserved as she would have put her undergarments out of sight first.
He crossed to the safe. It was a small metal container, certainly large enough to have held a hundred five- pound notes. Earlier he would have dearly liked to examine its contents for the evidence Cribb required. Now it was quite empty.
Suddenly Jago turned in surprise. From outside, under the window, had come two reports. He darted to the sill and looked out. The two dogs lay motionless on the lawn.
Presently Vibart, carrying a gun, approached their great bodies with caution, holding it ready for a third shot.
“Why in God’s name did you do that?” Jago shouted down. He was incensed. Hadn’t there been enough meaningless violence already?
Vibart gave no answer until he was satisfied, by shifting the fallen bodies with his foot, that they were really dead.
“They were hers,” he shouted back. “There’s no sense in keeping them on now. They didn’t save her from Morgan, did they? Useless brutes. Better off dead.”
A movement behind Jago made him turn. D’Estin had entered the room and was standing facing the bed, shaking his head in incomprehension.
“I heard shooting,” he said. “But this. .”
“I was coming to tell you,” Jago said. “Vibart and I found her a few minutes ago. He’s outside. He just shot the dogs with that gun he bought you. He must have awaked the entire household.”
“We must stop the servants’ finding out about this,” said D’Estin, collecting himself. “We want no questions- police-that sort of thing. We’ll settle the score in our own way. They emptied the safe, did they? One of those bastards who came last night did this. It was more than they could bear to part with five hundred, even when they stood to gain twice as much in the fight.” He came to the window.
“What’s that idiot going to do with the dogs?” He leaned out and shouted to Vibart. “Move them into the woodshed, man! We want no questions about this.”
“It must be six-thirty by now,” said Jago. “What time does Mrs. Gruber come to wake her?”
“Quarter to eight. She’ll be down in the kitchens by now.
