It was a full twenty minutes before the superintendent got the information he wanted and came back with it.
"Well?" said Cleek, as he came in. "There is a mausoleum being built, is there not?"
"Yes. The murdered woman has been having it built for the past five or six months for the express purpose of having herself and her late husband entombed there, apart from all other Heatherlands and with all the pomp of dead royalty. The structure will not be completed for quite another half year. In the meantime, as this tragical affair has disorganised all arrangements and the body cannot be interred in the mausoleum until its completion, and it would be difficult to get an order to disinter it if it were once underground, Captain Glossop has consented to have it placed for a time in the new and as yet unused vault which he had erected last month in Brompton Cemetery."
"'A friend in need is a friend indeed,'" quoted Cleek sententiously; then, after a moment, "Mr. Narkom," he said.
"Let's go down and have another cup of tea, I want to have a word or two with the young duke."
"My dear fellow! Good heaven, do you think----"
"No; I've got past 'thinking.' I know one thing, however; for I've been poking about while you were away. The cook's room is just over this one, but the cook didn't do it. A five-foot woman can't reach up and cut down eight and a half feet of bell-rope, and--look, see! She wouldn't be likely to do it with the blade of a safety razor if she could!"
The little gathering in the drawing-room had not undergone much in the way of a change since they left it Cleek and the superintendent saw when they returned. The tea things had been removed, for the young duke's peppery temper was still in the ascendant and he was parading his six-feet-one of vigorous young manhood up and down the floor in a manner which wasn't the best thing in the world for the white-and-green Persian carpet. The tall captain sat on a low sofa beside his beautiful wife, who thoughtfully turned her rings on her fingers and followed with grave, sad-looking eyes the constantly pacing figure of the restless duke.
"My dear fellow, of course neither Amy nor I believe," the captain was saying, as Cleek and Narkom made their reappearance; "but the thing is, can you make others as disbelieving when your unhappy condition is so well known and her Grace's maid positively swears that the door was not locked, and---- Ah, here you are again, Mr. Narkom, and your good friend the amateur investigator with you."