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Updated: June 2, 2025
The woman whose stabbed and charred body had been found among the debris of the house in Maresfield Gardens burnt down on Christmas Eve was, it seemed, another of Gastrell's victims; he had stabbed her to death, and the house had been fired with a view to destroying all traces of the crime.
"You have but a few minutes to live," a man's voice exclaimed in a low tone. "If you want to say your prayers, you had better do so now." The voice was clearly Gastrell's. Now I realized that two men besides myself were in the closed car. The light from the electric torch still shone down upon my face. My eyes grew gradually accustomed to the bright light, which had at first dazzled them.
His back was turned to us, and I had not caught Mrs. Gastrell's glance. "D'you know who that is, that woman who has just come in?" I inquired carelessly, indicating her as I rose. "That?" Mrs. Stapleton answered, looking full at her, and this time their eyes met in a cold stare. "No, I have no idea." I confess that this flat untruth, spoken with such absolute sang-froid, somewhat disconcerted me.
Incidentally they mentioned that Connie Stapleton was in reality Gastrell's wife, and that Jasmine was his mistress, though Harold Logan, found in the hiding-hole at Holt, had been madly in love with her. "There," I said, turning to Jack Osborne as Albeury ended his cross-examination, "now you've got it all in black and white.
The voice was not that of either of the men he had met at Gastrell's reception; he could swear to that, he said. Yet he seemed to recognize the voice, indeed, to have heard it recently. He racked his brains to remember where, but to no purpose. The man spoke in a low tone, and its timbre and inflection betrayed what is called the voice of a gentleman, he said.
Gastrell's reception," she went on in an undertone, as we walked towards the woman. "I was introduced to her a couple of nights later. She is a cousin of Mr. Gastrell's." Almost before I had time to collect my thoughts, she had introduced me, adding, a moment later, with one of her charming smiles: "And will you take Mrs. Gastrell in to dinner?"
Reviewing the situation, as I walked slowly along, and debating in my mind whether to return to Paris or go straight back to England by the next boat, various possibilities presented themselves in turn. Virtually I was dead to all my friends in England, or I should be in a day or two, when the letter which would be found in Gastrell's pocket had been printed in the newspapers.
To my surprise Easterton and Jack Osborne were there, and the widow seemed pleased at finding that I knew them I guessed it was owing to Easterton's being there that Jasmine Gastrell was made to pass as Gastrell's cousin.
He was met by Doris Lorrimer you have probably noticed her, that dark, demure, quietly dressed girl who was at Connie Stapleton's dinner party at 'The Rook, and at Gastrell's last night." "You don't mean to say that she, too, is one of Gastrell's accomplices!" Jack exclaimed. "It seems impossible looking like that!" "I have suspected it for some time. Now I am sure.
"Very," I answered absently, "of music that is music." For my attention had become suddenly distracted. How came this woman to be here, this woman who called herself Gastrell's wife? Lord Easterton was somewhere about, for I had seen him in the crowd. Such a striking woman would be sure to attract his attention, he would inquire who she was, he might even ask Gastrell, and then what would happen?
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