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Updated: May 19, 2025
He left Greve sunk in a reverie at the desk, gazing with unseeing eyes upon the dead face of the master of Harkings. That sprawling corpse, the startled realization of death stamped for ever in the wide, staring eyes, was indeed a subject for meditation.
"On Sunday night Jeekes rang up Harkings from his club and asked to speak to Miss Trevert. Bude told him she had gone away. Jeekes then asked to speak to Sir Horace Trevert, who told him that his sister had gone to Rotterdam. Jeekes takes the first available train in the morning, recognizes Miss Trevert on the way across, and tags her to her hotel in Rotterdam.
He had ripped up walls and ceilings and torn down irrational matchwood partitions, discovering some fine old oak wainscot and the blackened roof-beams of the original farmstead. In the upshot he transformed Harkings into a very fair semblance of a late Jacobean house, fitted with every modern convenience and extremely comfortable.
"I'd have laid a shade of odds," he cried merrily, "that you were watching the gentleman at Amerongen, sir ..." "Tut, tut, Manderton," said the Chief, raising his hand to silence the other; "you run on too fast, my friend! I wish," he went on, changing the subject, "I could be with you at Harkings to-morrow to witness your reconstruction of the crime, Manderton. You'll go, I suppose, Greve?"
Outside in the gardens of Harkings it was a raw, damp evening, pitch-black now, with little gusts of wind which shook the naked bushes of the rosery. The garden door led by a couple of shallow steps on to a gravel path which ran all along the back of the house. The path extended right up to the wall of the house. On the other side it flanked the rosery.
"Friends of yours at Harkings asked me to warn you ..." began Bruce awkwardly. "My friends are scarcely in the majority there," retorted Robin. "Whom do you mean exactly?" But the boy ignored the question. "Three men watching the house!" he exclaimed; "don't you think that this looks as though Manderton meant business?" He returned to his post of observation at the curtain.
The sun doesn't shine on the Riviera at night, you know!" Lady Margaret busied herself at the tea-table with its fine Queen Anne silver and dainty yellow cups. It was the custom at Harkings to serve tea in the winter without other illumination than the light of the great log-fire that spat and leaped in the open hearth.
"This is a sad business, Bude!" said Bruce. "Ah, indeed, it is, sir," he sighed. "He had his faults had Mr. Parrish, as well you know, Mr. Wright. But he was an open-handed gentleman, that I will say, and we'll all miss him at Harkings ..." They were now in the corridor. Bude jerked a thumb over his shoulder.
I would have given it to you at Harkings, but I shoved it in my pocket and forgot all about it until I was in the train coming up to town this morning." Mr. Manderton took the sheet of paper, turned it over, and held it up to the light. Then, without comment, he put it away in the pocket of his jacket. "If Parrish killed himself," Robin went on earnestly, "that letter drove him to it.
"Then," said the detective, "I'm going to entrust you with that slotted sheet of paper again. For I have an idea, Mr. Greve, that you may get a glimpse of that letter before I do. I'll send a messenger round with it at once." Then a difficulty arose. Manderton had not got the girl's address. They had no address at Harkings. Nor did he know what train Miss Trevert had taken.
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