A Rich Full Death Read Online Free Page A

Siena, and was not expected to return until the following day. That this was in no way remarkable, I was able to confirm from my own knowledge. The aunt suffers from some suitably genteel ailment, and—there being some question of an inheritance—Joseph Eakin has gone fortnightly to commiserate with her throughout his stay here.
    In the absence of her husband Mrs Eakin had no plans either to entertain or be entertained, and she had accordingly dismissed all the servants except her own maid until the following morning. Beatrice had been retained to dress her mistress and to prepare a light luncheon, after which she had been given the rest of the day off, with instructions to return about supper time.
    From that moment on, it at first appeared, Isabel had been alone in the villa. Shortly afterwards, however, a very important clue emerged in the testimony of the gate-keeper, who deposed that an unknown woman had called at the villa at about four o’clock, leaving about twenty minutes later—and despite the strenuous cross-questioning of the police official, he would in no way be shaken from this testimony. He had opened the gates to let her in, he said, and closed them again after her departure. There had been no other visitors.
    This, therefore, brought us to twenty past four or thereabouts. Commissioner Talenti had astutely remarked that the victim’s clothing was extremely damp. As I have already observed, there had been but one fall of rain all day, as brief as it was intense, and this was over by five o’clock. Before that the weather was unnaturally close and still for the time of year, afterwards it grew increasingly windy, but with no further precipitation. It therefore seems clear that Isabel could not have died later than five o’clock—a mere forty minutes after her mysterious visitor left.
    The rest is quickly told. Returning at half past seven, Beatrice found the house deserted and the lamps guttering in the wind blowing in through the large glass doors which lay open on to the steps leading to the garden. As she went to close them, the girl caught sight of a strange white form apparently hovering several feet above the ground in the moonlit garden. As always with old houses, there are rumours that the villa is haunted—in this case by a beauteous maiden murdered long ago by a jealous lover, or some such nonsense. Directly the maid caught sight of the white shape glimmering in the garden she naturally assumed it to be the apparition, and fled to the gate-keeper’s lodge. The old man, a sturdy old Tuscan peasant who would bargain with the devil himself, returned alone to investigate, discovered Isabel’s body hanging from the tree, and went to fetch the authorities.
    And Beatrice? She, left alone once more, began to realise the problems that her mistress’s death was likely to cause her. Isabel Eakin was a foreigner; where foreigners are involved there are always complications; these are not likely to be diminished when the foreigner in question is young, beautiful and has met a violent death. The remedy, clearly, was to fight fire with fire — bring in another foreigner to deal with these problems in the high-handed foreign way. And so she sent a lad from a nearby farm to summon Mr Browning.
    Yes, indeed! I too sat bolt upright and wide awake at this astonishing intelligence. So did the police official.
    ‘We are so fortunate as to have several thousand foreigners here in Florence,’ he commented, with a flicker of a smile. ‘Why, out of so many, did you send for this one?’
    A pointing finger reduced Mr Browning to the status of an inanimate courtroom exhibit.
    And now, for the first time, Beatrice faltered—fatally. Thus far everything had been said calmly, smoothly, naturally; with some understandable confusion in places, but no sense whatever of embarrassment or difficulty. Yet now her eyes roved restlessly about, determinedly avoiding Mr Browning’s—who for his part was looking at the girl