The Shadow at Greystone Chase (An Angela Marchmont Mystery Book 10) Read Online Free PDF

not want dinner or to be disturbed. According to Edgar, he knocked on her door as he went up to dress, but there was no reply so he assumed she was asleep. He knocked again later that evening as he went up to bed, but again received no reply. He tried the door but found it locked, and so gave it up and thought nothing more of it.
    ‘The next morning, it was discovered that the door was now unlocked and that Selina had gone missing. At first it was thought that she had gone out early for a walk in the grounds, although she was not in the habit of doing so, but when lunch-time came and she still had not turned up a search was begun. She was found a little time later. It was Edgar himself who found her. He raised the alarm immediately, but it was too late, for she had evidently been dead for some time.
    ‘The police were called, of course, and at first they believed—as did everybody—that Selina had taken herself out for a walk early that morning, for some reason best known to herself, and that she had been attacked by an unknown assailant. But this was swiftly disproved by the medical evidence, which indicated that she had not died that morning at all, but the day before. Of course, that fact directed their attention towards the members of the household, since as far as anybody knew, Selina had spent the whole of the previous day in the house—and naturally, the first person to come under suspicion in cases such as these is the husband. Unfortunately, the very fact of Edgar’s having found her looked suspicious, since her body had been half-concealed in some undergrowth and was not easy to see. His story was that his eye had been caught by a glimpse of her dress, which was of a vivid pink, but the police jumped to a different conclusion, and assumed that the reason he had known where to find her was because he had killed her. It wasn’t long before the police found out about the row of the day before, and after that their investigations tended in only one direction. It was clear they believed that the dispute had continued later and that Edgar had killed Selina in a fit of anger.’
    ‘But his finding the body is surely not in itself enough to suggest that he did it,’ said Angela.
    ‘No,’ said Mr. Gilverson, ‘but other facts soon came to light which made things look very black for him. The police began a search of the house, and it was not long before they found clear evidence that Selina had been killed indoors—or at least hidden indoors for some time after her death.’
    ‘Oh?’ said Angela.
    ‘Yes,’ said Mr. Gilverson. He hesitated, and then went on, ‘In Edgar’s room was a large cupboard which was rarely or never used. Inside that the police found a hair-comb which was identified as Selina’s, with one or two long, fair hairs still attached to it. They also found a tiny scrap of pink fabric caught on a loose nail, which was later shown to have come from Selina’s dress. There was no reason at all for those things to have been in the cupboard unless Selina had gone in there herself, and why should she have done that when she was alive? Furthermore, the inside of the cupboard was very dusty, but the dust had clearly been disturbed by a heavy object of some sort. When they came to examine the body, they found streaks of dust on her dress in addition to the scraps of vegetation from the bed of leaves on which she had been found. It all pointed to Edgar’s having killed Selina in the house and hidden her body in the cupboard until everybody had gone to bed, after which he took her outside and disposed of her in the wood. It was thought that he had also locked her bedroom door so that nobody would go in and discover she was missing before he had had a chance to get rid of the body. Of course, it all looked conclusive enough. The police certainly thought so, and arrested him. You know the rest.’
    ‘I see,’ said Angela. At that moment she wanted more than anything to leave the place immediately and