emark of the
undertaker's wife, as reported by Philip Green. She had said, 'It
should be there before now. It took longer, being out of the
ordinary.' It was the coffin of which she spoke. It had been out of
the ordinary. That could only mean that it had been made to some
special measurement. But why? Why? Then in an instant I remembered
the deep sides, and the little wasted figure at the bottom. Why so
large a coffin for so small a body? To leave room for another body.
Both would be buried under the one certificate. It had all been so
clear, if only my own sight had not been dimmed. At eight the Lady
Frances would be buried. Our one chance was to stop the coffin before
it left the house.

"It was a desperate chance that we might find her alive, but it WAS a
chance, as the result showed. These people had never, to my knowledge,
done a murder. They might shrink from actual violence at the last.
The could bury her with no sign of how she met her end, and even if she
were exhumed there was a chance for them. I hoped that such
considerations might prevail with them. You can reconstruct the scene
well enough. You saw the horrible den upstairs, where the poor lady
had been kept so long. They rushed in and overpowered her with their
chloroform, carried her down, poured more into the coffin to insure
against her waking, and then screwed down the lid. A clever device,
Watson. It is new to me in the annals of crime. If our ex-missionary
friends escape the clutches of Lestrade, I shall expect to hear of some
brilliant incidents in their future career."

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Disappearance of Lady Frances
Carfax, by Arthur Conan Doyle

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