“Thank you,” she replied quietly. “Of course I realize your position. What do you want me to tell you?”
“I understand,” replied the inspector, “that this poor gentleman was your father. Would you mind telling me who he was and where he lived and giving me your own name and address?”
“My father’s name,” she answered, “was Julius D’Arblay. His private address was Ivy Cottage, North Grove, Highgate. His studio and workshop, where he carried on the profession of a modeller, is in Abbey Road, Hornsey. My name is Marion D’Arblay, and I lived with my father. He was a widower and I was his only child.”
As she concluded, with a slight break in her voice, the inspector shook his head, and again murmured, “Dear, dear,” as he rapidly entered her answers in his notebook. Then, in a deeply apologetic tone, he asked:
“Would you mind telling us what you know as to how this happened?”
“I know very little,” she replied. “As he did not come home last night, I went to the studio this morning quite early to see if he was there. He sometimes stayed there all night when he was working very late. The woman who lives in the adjoining house and looks after the studio, told me that he had been working late last night, but that he left to come home soon after ten. He always used to come through the wood because it was the shortest way and the most pleasant. So when I learned that he had started to come home, I came to the wood to see if I could find any traces of him. Then I met this gentleman, and he told me that he had seen a dead man in the wood, and—” Here she suddenly broke down, and, sobbing passionately, flung out her hand towards the corpse.
The inspector shut his notebook and, murmuring some indistinct words of sympathy, nodded to the constables, who had drawn up the stretcher a few paces away and lifted off the cover. On this silent instruction they approached the body, and, with the inspector’s assistance and mine, lifted it on to the stretcher without removing the latter from its carriage. As they picked up the cover the inspector turned to Miss D’Arblay and said gently but finally: “You had better not come with us. We must take him to the mortuary, but you will see him again after the inquest, when he will be brought to your house if you wish it.”
She made no objection; but as the constables approached with the cover she stooped over the stretcher and kissed the dead man on the forehead. Then she turned away; the cover was placed in position; the inspector and the constables saluted reverently, and the stretcher was wheeled away along the narrow track.
For some time after it had gone, we stood in silence at the margin of the pond with our eyes fixed on the place where it had disappeared. I considered in no little embarrassment what was to be done next. It was most desirable that Miss D’Arblay should be got home as soon as possible, and I did not at all like the idea of her going alone, for her appearance, with her drenched skirts and her dazed and rather wild expression, was such as to attract unpleasant attention. But I was a total stranger to her, and I felt a little shy of pressing my company on her. However, it seemed a plain duty, and, as I saw her shiver slightly, I said:
“You had better go home now and change your clothes. They are very wet. And you have some distance to go.”
She looked down at her soaked dress and then she looked at me.
“You are rather wet, too,” she said. “I am afraid I have given you a great deal of trouble.”
“It is little enough that I have been able to do,” I replied. “But you must really go home now; and if you will let me walk with you and see you safely to your house, I shall be much more easy in my mind.”
“Thank you,” she replied. “It is kind of you to offer to see me home, and I am glad not to have to go alone.”
With this, we walked together to the edge of the opening, and proceeded in single file along the track to the main path, and so out into Wood Lane, at the top of which we crossed the Archway Road into Southwood Lane. We walked mostly in silence, for I was unwilling to disturb her meditations with attempts at conversation, which could only have seemed banal or impertinent. For her part, she appeared to be absorbed in reflections the nature of which I could easily guess, and her grief was too fresh for any thought of distraction. But I found myself speculating with profound discomfort on what might be awaiting her at home. It is true that her own desolate state as an orphan without brothers or sisters had its compensation in that there was no wife to whom the dreadful tidings had to be imparted, nor any fellow orphans to have their bereavement broken to them. But there must be someone who cared; or, if there were not, what a terrible loneliness would reign in that house!
“I hope,” I said, as we approached our destination, “that there is someone at home to share your grief and comfort you a little.”
“There is,” she replied. “I was thinking of her, and how grievous it will be to have to tell her: an old servant and a dear friend. She was my mother’s nurse when the one was a child and the other but a young girl. She came to our house when my mother married, and has managed our home ever since. This will be a terrible shock to her, for she loved my father dearly—everyone loved him who
