“We had better get the body removed as quickly as possible. I will run along to the station and get the wheeled stretcher. There is no need for you to come. If you will go back and wait for us at the entrance to the wood that will save time. We shall be there within a quarter of an hour.”
I agreed gladly to this arrangement, and when I had seen him mount his machine and shoot away along the road, I turned back down the Lane and reentered the wood. Before taking up my post, I walked quickly down the path and along the track to the opening by the pond. My new friend was sitting just as I had left her, but she looked up as I emerged from the track and advanced towards her. I told her briefly what had happened and was about to retire when she asked: “Will they take him to our house?”
“I am afraid not,” I replied. “There will have to be an inquiry by the coroner, and until that is finished his body will have to remain in the mortuary.”
“I was afraid it might be so,” she said with quiet resignation; and as she spoke she looked down with infinite sadness at the waxen face in her lap. A good deal relieved by her reasonable acceptance of the painful necessities, I turned back and made my way to the rendezvous at the entrance to the wood.
As I paced to and fro on the shady path, keeping a lookout up the Lane, my mind was busy with the tragedy to which I had become a party. It was a grievous affair. The passionate grief which I had witnessed spoke of no common affection. On one life at least this disaster had inflicted irreparable loss, and there were probably others on whom the blow had yet to fall. But it was not only a grievous affair; it was highly mysterious. The dead man had apparently been returning home at night in a customary manner and by a familiar way. That he could have strayed by chance from the open, well-worn path into the recesses of the wood was inconceivable, while the hour and the circumstances made it almost as incredible that he should have been wandering in the wood by choice. And again, the water in which he had been lying was quite shallow; so shallow as to rule out accidental drowning as an impossibility.
What could the explanation be? There seemed to be but three possibilities, and two of them could hardly be entertained. The idea of intoxication I rejected at once. The girl was evidently a lady, and her father was presumably a gentleman, who would not be likely to be wandering abroad drunk; nor could a man who was sober enough to have reached the pond have been so helpless as to be drowned in its shallow waters. To suppose that he might have fallen into the water in a fit was to leave unexplained the circumstance of his being in that remote place at such an hour. The only possibility that remained was that of suicide; and I could not but admit that some of the appearances seemed to support that view. The solitary place—more solitary still at night—was precisely such as an intending suicide might be expected to seek; the shallow water presented no inconsistency; and when I recalled how I had found his daughter searching the wood with evident foreboding of evil, I could not escape the feeling that the dreadful possibility had not been entirely unforeseen.
My meditations had reached this point when, as I turned once more towards the entrance and looked up the Lane, I saw two constables approaching, trundling a wheeled stretcher, while a third man, apparently an inspector, walked by its side. As the little procession reached the entrance, and I turned back to show the way, the latter joined me and began at once to interrogate me. I gave him my name, address, and occupation, and followed this with a rapid sketch of the facts as known to me, which he jotted down in a large notebook, and he then said:
“As you are a doctor, you can probably tell me how long the man had been dead when you first saw him.”
“By the appearance and the rigidity,” I replied, “I should say about nine or ten hours; which agrees pretty well with the account his daughter gave of his movements.”
The inspector nodded. “The man and the young lady,” said he, “are strangers to you, I understand. I suppose you haven’t picked up anything that would throw any light on the affair?”
“No,” I answered; “I know nothing but what I have told you.”
“Well,” he remarked, “it’s a queer business. It is a queer place for a man to be in at night, and he must have gone there of his own accord. But there, it is no use guessing. It will all be thrashed out at the inquest.”
As he reached this discreet conclusion, we came out into the opening and I heard him murmur very feelingly, “Dear, dear! Poor thing.” The girl seemed hardly to have changed her position since I had last seen her, but she now tenderly laid the dead head on the grass and rose as we approached; and I saw with great concern that her skirts were soaked almost from the waist downwards.
The officer took off his cap and as he drew near looked down gravely but with an inquisitive eye at the dead man. Then he turned to the girl and said in a singularly gentle and deferential manner:
“This is a very terrible thing, Miss. A dreadful thing. I assure you that I am more sorry for you than I can tell; and I hope you will forgive me for
