Lost trumpet

THE LOST TRUMPET
95
“It was at Rashida that the tragedy took place ?”
I inquired.
Yes. Carl had a house there, and two or three
servants. One of them, I think, wasn’t a servant. She
was his mistress.”
Saying this, she turned away her face from me.
The blood welled in dark patches below her high
cheek-bones. I also looked away, pitying and a
little amused. She had done better to stay among
the frigid folk of Edinburgh if such a word could
make her blush.
“She was mentioned in the papers of the court of
inquiry—the Egyptian Government sent us copies
of those papers. She was blind.”
“Blind ?” I felt a sudden, sick distaste for the dead
Carl Simonssen.
Yes. That part of the matter did not appear
to shock her. “And they said that Carl had no
special enemies, even though he lived so wrongly.
But he was found one morning by one of his servants
—not the blind woman—with his throat cut from
ear to ear.”
She said it with no special emotion, that unfathom¬
able look still in her eyes. And then I saw that it was
no look at all; it was as though her eyes were thinly
and trimly glazed. Not, I commented to myself,
that they lacked health ; they merely lacked indi¬
viduality.
I roused myself to speak about this matter of
her brother’s murder. “Perhaps he committed
suicide.”