Bernard Capes

“ And then Mr Cabanis came; and being a young man, with ways different from ours——' again she hesitated.
'Out with it!' cried Sir Calvin. 'Don't keep anything back.'
'On the night before—before the deed,' said the housekeeper, with an effort, 'Annie had come down into the kitchen, I was told, red with fury over Mr Cabanis having tried to kiss her. She had boxed his ears for him, she said, and he had looked murder at her for it. He came down himself later on, I understand, and there was a fine scene between the two men. ”

“ But taste, after all, is a question not of mind but of breeding, and the man who has, like Disraeli, to stand on his head for a living, may be excused a little ostentation in the process. He looked at us both searchingly as we entered.
'This, Sergeant,' said Sir Calvin, 'is the Baron Le Sage, whom I mentioned to you as having encountered the unfortunate young woman in the copse a little before——.'
The detective nodded. 'I should like to ask a question of you, sir.'
Le Sage told what he knew. It was very little, and only of value in so far as it touched upon the evidence of time. ”

“ A prepaid telegram to Scotland Yard had brought the necessary sanction, and within a couple of hours of its despatch the Sergeant was safe at Wildshott, and already engaged over the preliminaries of the business. Personally, I admit, I felt greatly relieved by his appearance on the scene. A notable writer has somewhat humoured a belief in the fatuity of the professional detective; but that was with a view, I think, to exalt his own incomparable amateur rather than to discredit a singularly capable body of men, having a pretty persistent record of success to justify their being. ”

“ He went in the first instance to view the body, which had been laid on a table in the gun-room, with a policeman—one of two brought over the night before by the Chief Constable, a friend of Sir Calvin's, in person—to watch the door. Thereafter, established in the General's study, he briefly reviewed the evidence of such witnesses as could supply any topical information that bore on the crime—Le Sage, to wit, Hugo himself, Mrs Bingley the housekeeper, and one or two of the servants, including the men who, on their young master's alarmed summons, had first entered the copse to remove the body. ”

“ Sergeant Ridgway took an envelope from his pocket, and making a note on the back of it, returned it into keeping.
'Well, you can leave that to me,' he said, and, resting his right elbow in the palm of the other hand, softly caressed his chin, bending an intent look on his witness.
'Now, ma'am,' he said. 'I want to ask you a particular question. Has Annie Evans's conduct, while in this service, always continued to justify you in your first good opinion of her?'
'Always,' answered the housekeeper with emphasis. ”

“ The state in which I had found Hugh, that disquieting business of the gun, his insistence on sticking to his weapon—it was inevitable that any mind should instinctively leap to some association between these and a catastrophe so seemingly their corollary in its nature and instrumentality. ”

“ Supposing we both, here and now, address Sir Calvin on the subject?'
I was very much annoyed. 'Baron,' I said, 'I am not accustomed to seek advice in matters of conduct, and I certainly shall not do as you propose. Apart from the question of deserting my friend in a crisis, I think that any suggestion of our leaving now would look like a desire to avoid inquiry—which I, for my part, am far from wishing to do—and would bear a very bad complexion. You can act as you like ”

“ Spoilt he was, selfish he was, no doubt, but always the last man in the world to incline to personal violence. A sensitiveness to pain, almost morbid, on account of himself or others, was rather his characteristic ”