A Rich Full Death Read Online Free

shoulder, and direct him with gestures to return to the villa—any attempt at speech was quite out of the question in that wind. The two then set about freeing the tree of its awful burden.
    It was evident that any future developments would take place at the house rather than in the garden, so I hastily made my way back around the side of the villa to the front, through the low door beneath the steps and into a warren of passages and corridors which eventually led me to the cavernous kitchens. Here I found a little group consisting of the gate-keeper, Isabel’s maid, and the fourth man I had seen arrive in the carriage, who now introduced himself as Commissioner of Police Antonio Talenti.
    ‘You are Signor Eakin?’ he enquired.
    I hastened to disabuse him.
    ‘And what are you doing here?’ demanded the official, once I had identified myself.
    I explained that I had called in hopes of seeing Mr or Mrs Eakin, who were old friends of mine—this story would not have borne much scrutiny, but as luck would have it the door flew open at that very moment, admitting the two policemen carrying the body, and the anomalies of my presence were forgotten.
    The corpse was incongruously deposited on the nearest table, which happened to be one of the marble-topped kind used for rolling out noodles; water dripped monotonously from the sodden garments to the stone floor.
    Poor Isabel! I said just now that she was one who seemed to have the gift of effortlessly shrugging off the droop and pall of reality—yet here she was, unceremoniously laid out, a nightmare vision; the face horribly discoloured, the eyes and tongue protruding. It was an obscenely compelling spectacle: there was no looking at it, and no looking away. It had to be covered, and as there was nothing suitable to hand Beatrice was sent to search out a sheet.
    Meanwhile the door to the garden—at which the wind was heaving to get in—flew open once more, and Mr Browning appeared. He barely glanced at us—did not see me, I am sure. He had eyes for only one thing: Isabel’s corpse.
    The police official, with an ironical display of politeness which was not lost on his subordinates, begged this newcomer to have the goodness to identify himself. In view of the tyrannical way the authorities here comport themselves, he was treating Browning with consideration. I was therefore the more impressed with the insolence Mr Browning showed in ignoring the fellow, as if utterly unaware of his existence. He crossed to the table where the corpse lay, and examined with admirable coolness the loop of rope embedded in the bare white flesh of the neck, and then each of the poor dead white hands in turn.
    The constables were moving to recall Browning to the realities of the situation, when Beatrice returned and quite effectively did so by covering the piteous figure with the sheet she had procured. Deprived of the sole object of his attention, Mr Browning looked around like one emerging from a spiritualist trance.
    ‘Mr Booth! Are you here too?’ he murmured vaguely.
    ‘Aha! So you two know each other, eh?’ the police official demanded triumphantly, as if this fact were a crime. It was no doubt a justifiable impatience with the fellow’s overbearing manner which made Browning reply, ‘Certainly we do; and what of it?’—although of course the extent to which we ‘knew’ each other at this time was fairly limited. Nevertheless it was quite a feather in my cap to hear Mr Robert Browning roundly declare me to be his companion in this unequivocal manner!
    Ignoring the question, Talenti seated himself at the head of a long wooden table in the centre of the room. His constables stood guard at either side, and the rest of us remained grouped uneasily together, like schoolboys before the master. And so the interrogation began.
    The first point to be established related to the whereabouts of Mr Joseph Eakin: he had left Florence that morning to visit an elderly aunt of his who lives in