professional consultation. Naturally my curiosity was much aroused, and I agreed.
My friend the detective and I traveled down by train from London to a certain country estate in Kent. The house was a great gloomy pile, built during Elizabethan times. Its owner, besides being a man of considerable wealth, was something of an antiquarian, and also much interested in what he still called natural philosophy. It was not he, however, who had invited us to the estate, but his only child. She was a grown woman, and married for a year. And it was she-whose real name I cannot tell you even now, for at the time I swore that it would never pass my lips — she who conducted us on our arrival, with urgent speed, into a closed room for a private consultation. The room was large, and mostly lined with books, with new electric lights in its far corners, and on the huge desk an old-fashioned oil lamp, whose rays fell on a collection of curious items evidently brought together from the ends of the earth. I saw a whale’s tooth, a monkey’s skull, along with other items I did not immediately recognize. A small table at some distance from the desk held a microscope and various specimens. Along with their burden of books, the room’s many shelves held stuffed birds and animals.
“And now, your ladyship” began my friend the detective, “we are at your service. You may speak as freely before Dr. Corday here” —he glanced in my direction— “as before myself.”
The lady, whose considerable beauty was obviously being worn away by some overwhelming fear or worry, now appeared on the verge of collapse. “Very well.” She drew a deep, exhausted breath. “I must be brief, for my father and my husband will both soon return, and I must save them, if I can…
“The incident that haunts me, that has driven me to the brink of madness, occurred almost exactly a year ago, and in this very room. I must confess to you that before I was married, or even knew Richard well, I was acquainted with a man, named Hayden. I have outlined to you already, sir, how that came to be—”
“You have indeed, your ladyship.” My companion gave an impatient nod. “Since our time is short, we had better concentrate on what happened between you and Hayden in this very room, as you say it was. That is the aspect of the case in which I most value Dr. Corday’s consultation.”
“You are right.” Our hostess paused again to collect herself, then plunged on. “I had not seen Hayden for many months. I was beginning to manage to forget him, when almost on the very eve of my wedding, he appeared here unexpectedly. I was alone in the house except for a few servants, my father being engaged on some last- minute business in London having to do with the arrangements.
“Hayden, of course, knew that I was alone. And his purpose in coming was an evil one. He had brought with him some letters — they were foolish letters indeed — that I had written him in an earlier day. The letters contained … certain things that could have ruined me, had Hayden given them, as he threatened to do, to my prospective husband. I protested my innocence. He admitted it, but read from the letters certain phrases, words I had almost forgotten, that suggested otherwise. Hayden would destroy me, he swore, unless — unless ‘Here and now in this very room’ was how he put it — I should — should—”
For a moment the lady could not continue. My friend and I exchanged glances, of sympathy and determination, in a silent pledge that we would do everything possible to assist her. It must be hard for folk with experience only of the late twentieth century to grasp what a threat such letters could represent, to understand what impact the mere suggestion of a premarital affair could have had at that time and place, on one in her position. It would have been regarded by all her contemporaries as the literal ruin of the young lady’s life.
“I was innocent,” she repeated, when she was able to resume at last. “I swear to you both that I was. Yet that man had some devilish power, influence … I had broken free of it before, and as he faced me in this room I swore to myself that I would never allow it to gain the faintest hold on me again.
“‘Sooner or later you will have me’, the villain said, sneering at me. ‘I have now been invited into your fine house, you see.’ Those were his words, and I have puzzled over them; alas, a greater and more horrible puzzle was to come.
“I retreated to the desk — I stood here in front of it, like this. Hayden was just there, and he advanced upon me. I cried at him to stay away. My hand, behind me on the desk, closed on a piece of stone — much like this one.” With that her ladyship raised what would now be called a geode from among the curios collected on the huge desk. “I raised it — like this — and warned him again to stop.
“Hayden only smiled at me — no, sneered — as if the idea that I might refuse him, even resist him, were a childish fantasy that only a childish creature like myself — a mere woman — could entertain. He sneered at me, I say! His handsome face was hideously transformed, and it seemed to me that even his teeth were … were … and he came on toward me, his hands reaching out.”
The lovely narrator raised her chin. “I hit him, gentlemen. With the stone. With all my strength. And — God help me — I think it was as much because of the way in which he looked at me, so contemptuously, as it was because of anything I feared that he might do.
“I hit him, and he fell backward, with a broad smear of blood across his forehead. I have the impression that only one of his eyes was still open, and that it was looking at me with the most intense surprise. He fell backward, and rolled halfway over on the carpet, and was still.
“I was perfectly sure, looking down at his smashed face, that he was dead. Dead. And I swear to you that at that moment I felt nothing but relief … but for a moment only. Then the horror began. Not an intrinsic horror at what I had done — that came to me too, but later — but horror at the fact that what I had just done was certain to be discovered, and at other discoveries that must flow from that. Even though I might — I almost certainly would — be able to plead self defence and avoid any legal penalty, yet inevitably enough information must be made public to bring ruin down upon me — and disgrace upon Richard, whom I loved…
“I suppose that in that moment I was half mad with shock and grief. Not, you understand, grief for the one who, as I thought, lay dead—”
My friend interrupted. “As you thought?”
“As — let me finish, and in a moment you will understand.”
“Then pray continue.”
“My eye fell on the door of the lumber room — there.” It was a plain, small, inconspicuous door, set in the wall between bookcases, some eight or ten feet from the desk. “I seized Hayden by the ankles — to take him by the hands would have meant touching his skin, and the thought of that was utterly abhorrent to me — and I dragged him into there.”
“May I?”
“Of course.”
Taking up the lamp from the desk, my friend moved to open the small door, which was unlocked. The lamplight shining in revealed a dusty storage closet. Its walls and floor were of stone, its ceiling of solid wood; there was no window, or any other door. The chamber was half-filled with a miscellany of boxes, crates, and bundles, none larger than a bushel, and all covered with a fine film of dust that might well have lain undisturbed for the past year.
Our client joined us looking in. She said: “The room was very much as you see it now. My father uses it chiefly for storage of things he has brought back from his various travels and then never finds time to catalogue, or else judges at second thought to be not worthy of display.
“I dragged Hayden — or his body — in there, and left him on the dusty floor.
“Understand that this was not part of any thought-out plan for concealing what I had done. It was only a shocked reaction, like that of a child trying to hide the pieces of a broken vase. Hardly aware of what I was doing, I came back here to the middle of the room, and picked up from the carpet the stone that had done the deed. I carried it into the lumber-room also, and threw it on top of that which lay on the floor already. I then came out of the lumber-room and closed its door, and locked it — though it is rarely if ever locked — with a key I knew was kept in the top drawer of my father’s desk.
“Then, with my mind still whirling in terror, I looked around. The letters, where were they? Still in Hayden’s pocket, for now I remembered distinctly seeing him replace them there. It might be wise to get them out, but for the moment I could not think of touching him again.
“And there was blood on the carpet. I had noted that already, in my frenzied panic. But now, as my mind made its first adjustment back toward sanity, I saw that the spots were only two or three in number, and so small against the dark pattern that no one entering the study casually would be in the least likely to notice them. Here, gentlemen, is where they were — over the past year they have faded almost to invisibility.”
My companion had crouched down and whipped out a magnifying glass, with which he scrutinized closely the indicated section of the carpet. He stood up frowning. “Pray continue,” he said again, his voice non-committal.
