Lying on his face by the fireplace, in which red ashes still glowed,
Gerald Carron lay dead, a revolver near him, his face in a small pool of
blood.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Lady Kingsmead fainted dead away for once in her life, dropping in a
huddled heap near the man she had loved and unloved.
Brigit stared at them for a moment, wondering vaguely which of them was
dead, which only fainting. Then, just as she was kneeling to raise her
mother to a better position, the door opened and two men, one of them
Giacomo, Carron's valet, entered in great haste.
The second man was, he explained, a doctor, whom the valet had gone for
on finding his master's body.
The next few minutes were minutes that Brigit never forgot. The Italian
servant, chattering and weeping, the young doctor helping her to loosen
Lady Kingsmead's tight clothes; his hurried explanations and questions;
the very closeness of the air, with the smell of gunpowder still faintly
perceptible.
Lady Kingsmead, laid upon Carron's bed, came to in a few minutes in
violent hysterics, and the young doctor, when he had given her a
soothing draught, insisted on the two women leaving.
"I must send for the coroner," he explained, "and it will be unpleasant.
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