Let Him Lie Read Online Free PDF

to the house as quickly as possible? I must go to the orchard at once. Don’t look so scared, darling. It’s just an accident, you know—somebody shooting rabbits and—and just winged your uncle, perhaps. I don’t suppose he’s badly hurt. Go along now. And find Sir Henry Blundell or Dr. Hall or both of them, and quietly, without making a fuss, ask them to come to the orchard. Got that?” 
    â€œYes, Jeanie,” said the child obediently, licking her pale lips. She glanced with a sort of stony horror towards the orchard gate, and did as she was told.
    When Jeanie, with a dreadful feeling of unwillingness, entered the orchard there seemed to be no one there but a speckled hen strayed from the barn-yard and pecking about for grubs, giving the orchard, even in its wintry gauntness, a homely, peaceful quality quite at variance with Jeanie’s feelings. A ladder stood up against one of the tall old trees which still remained among the more recently planted ones. There was no one on the ladder. But someone lay at its foot, and lay very still.
    Jeanie’s heart gave two great thuds, and she found herself walking slowly, slowly across the grass. She heard, not far away, a car start up and drive off, humming on an ever-rising note into silence.
    Could a man lie as still as this, and not be dead? Perhaps, but he could not stare up at one so blankly from a face so queerly pale around the patchy, weatherbeaten cheeks. He would have to blink. He could not stare in such a long surprise. His hand lying upon the turf, might be as cold, but not his cheek. He might bleed, but not from a small black hole in the temple.
    Jeanie rose quickly from her knees and turned away. There was a sort of blankness upon her inner lids. Raising her eyes from the grass, she saw two men coming in at the orchard gate. One, she knew, was brisk little Dr. Hall, the other, tall and loose-limbed, she supposed, Sir Henry Blundell. They wore, both of them, that slightly abstracted, slightly self-important air with which men try to express their sense of the gravity of events.
    â€œI think Mr. Molyneux’s dead,” said Jeanie baldly, as they came up. 
    â€œOh, don’t say that!” responded Dr. Hall, dropping upon his knee. There was a certain lack of conviction in his voice.
    Sir Henry, who had been looking at the still body at his feet with that remote, inexpressive stare which is often used to cover a good deal of nervous distress, turned and looked suddenly at Jeanie. He had that kind of blue, well-focused, direct eye for which the word “piercing” scarcely seems exaggerated. He was a good-looking, long, elderly man of the grey-faced soldier type.
    â€œDid you say you saw this happen, Miss Halliday?”
    â€œNo. But I heard the shot. At least, I suppose it was the shot.”
    â€œWhat direction did it seem to come from?”
    â€œI don’t know! We were in the hay-loft, you see, Sarah and I. We heard a shot. It might have been from anywhere. It sounded fairly close.”
    Dr. Hall rose stiffly and brushed at the knees of his trousers.
    â€œI’m afraid there’s nothing I can do. He died instantly, I should say. A bullet in the brain. See here.”
    He pointed to the small black hole in the left temple round which the blood was already clotting.
    â€œThe cause of death’s pretty obvious. The only thing that puzzles me is the way he’s lying. On his back like that. I should have expected a man hit like that to fall on his face.”
    â€œBut suppose he fell out of the tree,” said Jeanie.
    Both men looked at the tall old tree with the ladder leaning against it.
    â€œI should say there’s very little doubt he did,” said Sir Henry. “And, in that case, it may be very difficult to fix the direction of the shot. I suppose it couldn’t possibly have been suicide?”
    Dr. Hall briskly shook his head, looking down at the body of Robert