“Is Colonel Protheroe here?” I asked.
“In the study. Been here since a quarter past six.”
“And Mr. Redding’s been here?”
“Come a few minutes ago. Asked for you. I told him you’d be back at any minute and that Colonel Protheroe was waiting in the study, and he said he’d wait too, and went there. He’s there now.”
“No, he isn’t,” I said. “I’ve just met him going down the road.”
“Well, I didn’t hear him leave. He can’t have stayed more than a couple of minutes. The mistress isn’t back from town yet.”
I nodded absentmindedly. Mary beat a retreat to the kitchen quarters and I went down the passage and opened the study door.
After the dusk of the passage, the evening sunshine that was pouring into the room made my eyes blink. I took a step or two across the floor and then stopped dead.
For a moment I could hardly take in the meaning of the scene before me.
Colonel Protheroe was lying sprawled across my writing table in a horrible unnatural position. There was a pool of some dark fluid on the desk by his head, and it was slowly dripping on to the floor with a horrible drip, drip, drip.
I pulled myself together and went across to him. His skin was cold to the touch. The hand that I raised fell back lifeless. The man was dead—shot through the head.
I went to the door and called Mary. When she came I ordered her to run as fast as she could and fetch Dr. Haydock, who lives just at the corner of the road. I told her there had been an accident.