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Updated: May 10, 2025
"Did you hear what I said to you?" angrily demanded Barrant. "Were you not told not to interfere with these rooms in any way? You have no right up here." "More right than you have to come into a house like a thief," retorted Thalassa coldly. "I have my work to do. The place must be looked after, whether I'm spied on or not." "I advise you not to take that tone with me," replied the detective.
This startling instance of the stern morality of aristocratic womanhood was unfortunately wasted on Barrant, whose thoughts had reverted to the principal preoccupation of his mind. Mr. Portgartha rambled on. "Aw, but it's strange to be meetin' you like this, in old Garge's wagonette.
But Barrant reflected that in his experience suicides were generally people who had been broken by life or were bored with it. Men of action or intellect rarely committed suicide, not because they valued life highly, but because they had so much to do in their brief span that they hadn't time to think about putting an end to it. Death usually overtook them in the midst of their schemes.
"How did you get in?" Barrant looked past him into the room. There was a litter of papers on the table and shelves, as he had last seen it, but it did not seem to him that anything had been disturbed. The door of the death chamber opposite was closed. "What are you doing up here?" he said sternly. Thalassa did not deign to parley. "What do you want?" he repeated, looking steadily at the detective.
Thalassa came for me with the news of my brother's death, and I did not get back from Flint House until very late." "I suppose you are aware your sister does not share your view that your brother committed suicide?" "I understand she has some absurd suspicion about Thalassa, my brother's servant." "Why do you call her suspicion absurd?" asked Barrant cautiously.
"I've told you everything," Thalassa commenced, then straightened his long bony frame in a sudden access of anger, and brought his hand sharply down on the table. "What are you trying to badger me for, like this? You'll get nothing more out of me if you question me till Doomsday." "But why should you keep anything back?" asked Barrant softly.
He accompanied Barrant to the door with the lamp, which he held above his head to light him down the garden path. Barrant, glancing back, saw him looking after him, his face outlined in the darkness by the yellow rays of the lamp. Barrant found the inn at the dark end of a stone alley, with the sound of tipsy singing and shuffling feet coming through the half-open door.
The consideration of that question led him to the conclusion that perhaps Thalassa had been impelled to his choice by the realization that she was as good-looking a wife as he could afford. Barrant reflected that women resembled horses in value. The mettlesome showy ones were bred to display their paces for rich men only.
He eyed Barrant with some sternness. "But this was not a fat old woman," said Barrant. "She was a pretty young girl." "Ma'ad or widder, it's all the same to me," returned the misogynist. "Some holds with the sex and finds them soothing, but I was never took up with them myself. I prefers beer. Every man to his taste." "Did any of the passengers alight at the crossroads?"
Somebody had caught the dead man's arm in such a strenuous grip that the livid impression had remained after death. The discovery was significant enough, but Barrant was not at that moment prepared to say how much it portended. It seemed certain that the marks had not been made by Robert Turold himself.
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