“Are those your footprints?”
“Yes, they are. I’m afraid I’ve made a mess here. It’s chalk, you know.”
“Indeed I do know. Mr. Sarton, the magistrate here, pointed that out to us when we viewed the remains of the victim. Chalk was all over the shoes of the poor man. Yet the odd thing was that there was no place thereabouts that he could have picked up the chalk on the soles of his shoes, and so he came to the conclusion that the body had been moved.”
“But that’s nonsense,” cried Clarissa.
“No, I thought it was quite reasonable, and so did Sir John.”
“Yet it is only so if you did view the body in another place from that where I found him.”
“No, I found him first, and then I took Mr. Fowler to see.”
“Just a moment,” said I, ”perhaps, Clarissa, you had best tell me the story from the beginning.”
”But where shall I start?”
“As I said,
“Oh, well enough, well enough,” said she, ”now let me see. When you went off to the library, Mr. Fowler took me to a room that is kept as a kind of picture gallery. Oh, you should have stayed with us, Jeremy. Some of the paintings were
“Really, Clarissa, I have no idea. Do get on with your story, won’t you?”
She sighed. ”Well, all right. Oh, but whilst we were there in this gallery room, Mr. Fowler began to tell about the ghost. You remember? Sir Simon talked about him at dinner? Well, Mr. Fowler’s version was much more complete. For one thing, the spirit which haunts this house is that of the first Baronet of Mongeham, Sir Roger Grenville, who received his title over a hundred years ago! There was something familiar about the features of the face in the portrait.”
“Please, Clarissa, get on with it.”
Well, obviously her way of telling a story is not my own. If there is a byway or a digression in sight, then she will take it, no matter where it leads. And indeed, in spite of my urging that she get on with her tale, she supplied all manner of extraneous detail on the arrogant cook, Jacques Dufour, and his most impressive kitchen belowstairs; then, too, she gave me Will Fowler’s account of Sir Simon’s courtship of the present Lady Grenville, which was presented down to every last particular. And so on.
Since I am sure, reader, that you would prefer that I dispense with all such minutiae, I now offer you my version of the discovery of the body purged and abridged of all but what is relevant to this narrative. Let it begin with Will Fowler’s offer to show her about the grounds upon which the house was situated.
Having given her a good look at the kitchen, he showed her out the rear door of the house and into the garden. (This did surprise me, for I did suppose that in order to reach the place where the murdered man had been found, they would have exited by the front door.) In any case, Mr. Fowler did show her about the garden, proving himself knowledgeable regarding the varieties of flowers and other plants which were laid out in the space in chaotic profusion. They walked the garden path which led out past some outbuildings and ultimately into the thick woods which surrounded the house on three sides. She asked Mr. Fowler where the path led, and he said that there was an old, deserted chalk mine higher up the hill and nothing more. Just then Mr. Fowler was hailed from the house by the cook, Jacques, who demanded that he return to settle a disagreement with one of the porters. Reluctantly, he made to go, but Clarissa asked if she might not stay on there in the garden, and he, thinking it would take but a short while to settle the matter, granted her wish and suggested that should she grow weary of the garden and wish to rest, she might sit upon the bench near the brook, ”a favorite place of Lady Grenville’s.”
As it happened, Mr. Fowler was detained longer than expected. Clarissa grew bored with inspecting flowers; and not one to rest content sitting in one place, she chose rather to follow the path which led out of the garden and up the hill. The out-buildings which she passed were quite unlike the stables which lay off to the far side of the house: they were intended for human occupancy and were evidently indeed occupied; she heard rough, male voices issuing from one and moved swiftly and quietly past it that she might not be detected.
Once beyond, she turned and looked back at the house, half hoping that she might see Mr. Fowler below, beckoning her to him. Yet, not seeing him, there seemed naught to do but plunge onward up the path and into the woods. Glancing down, she happened to notice a peculiarity in the pathway: it was heavily dusted with white, and there were many footprints. It was not so below in the garden-of that she was certain. But then she recalled that Mr. Fowler had said there was a chalk mine up on the hill, but he had described it as a ”deserted” chalk mine. Evidently he was wrong about that. Apparently the men who lived in those buildings worked in the chalk mines. But surely Mr. Fowler would have known about that, wouldn’t he? After all, he seemed to act as a sort of majordomo in the Grenville household. She was puzzled, but fueled now by curiosity, she picked up her pace and made her way swiftly up the path.
She saw the entrance to the mine plain enough, though not until she was a scant ten yards away, so dark was it in that part of the wood. But having come so close, she noted that the chalk dust was specially thick in that space, and that there were all manner of prints to be seen in it-and not just bootprints. For, contrary to what Will Fowler had implied, the path did not end at the entrance to the mine; it led beyond and farther up the hill. But just before the entrance, it intersected a wagon track which led off to the right-that is, in the direction of the stables. There at the crossing, hoofprints and wagon tracks cut back and forth in the chalk dust. There could be no doubt that there had been a good deal of sustained activity in that wide space. It would seem that, far from being deserted, the mine was working briskly once again.
She was moved to explore the mine in order to confirm this. On the other hand, she was curious as to what lay above the mine and where the path she had followed truly led. And would it not be good to know where the wagon track terminated? Perhaps at the stable, where she had supposed; but perhaps, too, somewhere beyond it at some secret intersection with the main road. Yes, secret-all of this was most curious and most secret.
As Clarissa stood before the mine entrance, casting her eyes this way and that, trying to decide what her next move might be, her glance did fix upon something in the underbrush, something that looked, as near as she could tell, like a human hand. She was drawn to it immediately. Hastening to the spot, kneeling, though not touching the hand, she looked closely beyond it and saw, thank God, that it was attached to a whole body, one hidden among the plants and bushes that provided a kind of carpet beneath this mighty forest of oak and pine. She pushed the bushes aside and flattened the plants, and then she had a proper look at him. He was dead, of course. She expected that. A man does not climb in amongst the vegetation to take himself a nap. No, this was not the place for it. The young man’s wound did give her pause, however. Looking down upon the cut in his throat, she saw that he had lost much blood. The lower part of his neck was quite drenched with it, though it had caked and darkened and looked more like dirt than blood. She shivered at the sight, quite in spite of herself. (It may have been that the nature of the wound brought back the memory of a time when a knife was held against her own throat, by that villain, Jackie Carver, and a threat was made to inflict just such damage, as you, reader, may recall from an earlier narrative.)
She had seen enough to know that there was no point in remaining there. Half-crawling to avoid the lowest branches of the pine trees, she left the body and turned back down the path toward the house. Just then, from far below, she heard Mr. Fowler’s voice calling her name. She ran to meet him and told him what she had found. Quite shocked she was at the effect her news had upon him. He was not angered at her, as she thought he might be; he seemed, rather, to be quite terrified at what she had told him. Instructing her to wait for him on that bench by the brook, he hastened up the path without so much as a look back at her. Yet he surprised her by stopping at the outbuildings, banging on the doors, and rousting four men from them. Together they ascended the path and disappeared round a bend.
Though she waited long, this time she did not stray from that bench in the garden. She kept place for what seemed a century yet must have been near an hour. When Mr. Fowler returned, he came alone. She reflected that
