The Crooked House | Page 9

For a tense minute he knelt beside it. The others waited.
"Destroyed," they heard him mutter--"utterly destroyed...."
When he rose, his eyes were full of tears.
"It is terrible. Who was with her last?"
"I was with her less than a quarter of an hour ago," Tranter replied.
"She said she was going back to the house, and asked me to find Mr.
Copplestone, and tell him that she was not feeling well."
"Where are your police?" asked Monsieur Dupont.
"Gluckstein is going to take the ladies back to the house, and telephone
for them," the manager returned.
The financier departed with his charges. The four men remained, facing
each other over the dead body. Rain was falling heavily.
"Poor girl," said the clergyman huskily.
"That such a brute should be at large," the manager added.
Copplestone's gaze again became rivetted to the ground. He seemed
unconscious of their presence. He was like a man alone and dazed in a
strange world.
Then the storm burst over them with all its fury. The rain poured down
in torrents, the lightning was incessant. It was as if the elements
themselves, in their rage, were seeking to complete the work of
destruction.
"We can't leave her out in this--police or no police," the clergyman

shivered.
Copplestone bent down again. The manager moved to assist, but
Tranter put him aside, and assisted Copplestone to lift the ghastly
burden in his arms. Then they picked their way slowly along the
winding paths to the house.
When they entered the decorated room, Copplestone's strange
immobility flashed upon him with startling suddenness. Uttering a oath,
he placed what he had previously been carrying with dull indifference
roughly on a couch, and hurled himself furiously upon the confusion of
decorations, tearing and crushing everything into a smashed heap on
the floor. So overwhelming was his violence that no one dared attempt
to stop him. He dashed the lights to the ground, and rent the flags with
appalling ferocity. In a few moments a shattered pile was all that
remained of the medley of illumination. He stood on the pile and
ground his heels into it.
Then all the energy was snuffed out of him like the switching off of an
electric current. The dull heavy cloud descended on him again. He
stared vacantly at the others, shrugged his shoulders slightly, and
turned his back on them.
The silence remained unbroken until a loud ringing at the front door
bell announced the arrival of the police.
CHAPTER V
COPPLESTONE
Detective-Inspector Fay was an able and successful officer, of
international reputation, whose achievements had placed a substantial
price on his head in most countries sufficiently civilized to possess
their criminal organizations. His bag had included many famous
law-breakers, and, though now employed in less strenuous directions,
he was admitted to be one of the most skilful and reliable of Scotland
Yard's unravelers of mystery. But, experienced as he was, the inspector
could not suppress his horror and indignation when the mutilated body

of Christine Manderson was uncovered to him.
"What, in God's name, was there in this garden to-night?" he demanded,
shuddering.
"A madman," the theatrical manager muttered.
The inspector's glance rested on him for an instant, but passed on. He
made no further remarks during his examination--but when, concluding
it, he carefully replaced the covering and turned again to the others,
there was a concentrated gleam in his eyes and a certain set to his face
that were known to bode ill to the perpetrators of the deeds that
inspired them.
"There can scarcely be a whole bone in her body," he declared,
regarding them all intently. "Her face is smashed to pulp; some of the
hair has been wrenched from her head; and even the bones of her
fingers are broken. It is the most brutal and disgusting crime I have had
the misfortune to meet with in the whole of my thirty years
experience."
He gave a brief order to an attendant constable, who moved to the door.
"If you will kindly retire with the constable to the next room," he
requested, "I will take a separate account from every one. Perhaps Mr.
Copplestone will give me his information first."
The constable marshalled them into an adjoining room, which the
danseuse filled with complaints at this prolonged detention.
Copplestone remained behind. His dullness and immobility had
increased almost to a stupor.
"She was engaged to marry me," he said, in a slow lifeless tone, "since
yesterday."
Inspector Fay seated himself at a table, and opened his note-book.
"We fully sympathize with you, Mr. Copplestone," he said quietly,

"and I am afraid it is poor consolation to promise you that justice shall
be done on the inhuman criminal, whoever it may be."
"Justice?" Copplestone returned, in the same weary, monotonous