"Charnley always fascinated me," he said. "I have been there only once since the tragedy. A grim house - and a ghostly one."
"That's true," said Bristow.
"There are actually two authentic ghosts," said Monckton. "They say that Charles I walks up and down the terrace with his head under his arm - I have forgotten why, I'm sure. Then there is the Weeping Lady with the Silver Ewer, who is always seen after one of the Charnleys dies."
"Tosh," said Bristow scornfully.
"They have certainly been a very ill-fated family," said Mr Satterthwaite hurriedly. "Four holders of the title have died a violent death and the late Lord Charnley committed suicide."
"A ghastly business," said Monckton gravely. "I was there when it happened."
"Let me see, that must be fourteen years ago," said Mr Satterthwaite, "the house has been shut up ever since."
"I don't wonder at that," said Monckton. "It must have been a terrible shock for a young girl. They had been married a month, just home from their honeymoon. Big fancy dress ball to celebrate their homecoming. Just as the guests were starting to arrive Charnley locked himself into the Oak Parlour and shot himself. That sort of thing isn't done. I beg your pardon?"
He turned his head sharply to the left and looked across at Mr Satterthwaite with an apologetic laugh.
"I am beginning to get the jimjams, Satterthwaite. I thought for a moment there was someone sitting in that empty chair and that he said something to me.
"Yes," he went on after a minute or two, "it was a pretty ghastly shock to Alix Charnley. She was one of the prettiest girls you could see anywhere and cram full of what people call the joy of living, and now they say she is like a ghost herself. Not that I have seen her for years. I believe she lives abroad most of the time."
"And the boy?"
"The boy is at Eton. What he will do when he comes of age I don't know. I don't think, somehow, that he will reopen the old place."
"It would make a good People's Pleasure Park," said Bristow.
Colonel Monckton looked at him with cold abhorrence.
"No, no, you don't really mean that," said Mr Satterthwaite. "You wouldn't have painted that picture if you did. Tradition and atmosphere are intangible things. They take centuries to build up and if you destroyed them you couldn't rebuild them again in twentyfour hours."
He rose. "Let us go into the smoking-room. I have some photographs there of Charnley which I should like to show you."
One of Mr Satterthwaite's hobbies was amateur photography. He was also the proud author of a book, "Homes of My Friends." The friends in question were all rather exalted and the book itself showed Mr Satterthwaite forth in rather a more snobbish light than was really fair to him.
"That is a photograph I took of the Terrace Room last year," he said.
He handed it to Bristow. "You see it is taken at almost the same angle as is shown in your picture. That is rather a wonderful rug - it is a pity that photographs can't show colouring."
"I remember it," said Bristow, "a marvellous bit of colour. It glowed like a flame. All the same it looked a bit incongruous there. The wrong size for that big room with its black and white squares. There is no rug anywhere else in the room. It spoils the whole effect - it was like a gigantic blood stain."
"Perhaps that gave you your idea for your picture?" said Mr Satterthwaite.
"Perhaps it did," said Bristow thoughtfully. "On the face, of it, one would naturally stage a tragedy in the little panelled room leading out of it."
"The Oak Parlour," said Monckton. "Yes, that is the haunted room right enough. There is a Priests hiding hole there - a movable panel by the fireplace. Tradition has it that Charles I was concealed there once. There were two deaths from duelling in that room. And it was there, as I say, that Reggie Charnley shot himself."
He took the photograph from Bristow's hand. "Why, that is the Bokhara rug," he said, "worth a couple of thousand pounds, I believe. When I was there it was in the Oak Parlour - the right place for it. It looks silly on that great expanse of marble flags."
Mr Satterthwaite was looking at the empty chair which he had drawn up beside his. Then he said thoughtfully, "I wonder when it was moved?"
"It must have been recently. Why, I remember having a conversation about it on the very day of the tragedy. Charnley was saying it really ought to be kept under glass." Mr Satterthwaite shook his head. "The house was shut up immediately after the tragedy and everything was left exactly as it was."
Bristow broke in with a question. He had laid aside his aggressive manner. "Why did Lord Charnley shoot himself?" he asked.
Colonel Monckton shifted uncomfortably in his chair. "No one ever knew," he said vaguely.
"I suppose," said Mr Satterthwaite slowly, "that it was suicide."
The Colonel looked at him in blank astonishment.
"Suicide," he said, "why, of course it was suicide. My dear fellow, I was there in the house myself."
Mr Satterthwaite looked towards the empty chair at his side and, smiling to himself as though at some hidden joke the others could not see, he said quietly, "Sometimes one sees things more clearly years afterwards than one could possibly at the time."
"Nonsense," spluttered Monckton, "arrant nonsense! How can you possibly see things better when they are vague in your memory instead of clear and sharp?"
But Mr Satterthwaite was reinforced from an unexpected quarter.
"I know what you mean," said the artist. "I should say that possibly you were right. It is a question of proportion, isn't it? And more than proportion probably. Relativity and all that sort of thing."
"If you ask me," said the Colonel, "all this Einstein business is a lot of dashed nonsense. So are spiritualists and the spook of one's grandmother!" He glared round fiercely. "Of course it was suicide," he went on. "Didn't I practically see the thing happen with my own eyes?"
"Tell us about it," said Mr Satterthwaite, "so that we shall see it with our eyes also."
With a somewhat mollified grunt the Colonel settled himself more comfortably in his chair.
"The whole thing was extraordinarily unexpected," he began.
"Charnley had been his usual normal self. There was a big party staying in the house for this ball. No one could ever have guessed he would go and shoot himself just as the guests began arriving."
"It would have been better taste if he had waited until they had gone," said Mr Satterthwaite.
"Of course it would. Damned bad taste - to do a thing like that."
"Uncharacteristic," said Mr Satterthwaite.
"Yes," admitted Monckton, "it wasn't like Charnley."
"And yet it was suicide?"
"Of course it was suicide. Why, there were three or four of us there at the top of the stairs. Myself, the Ostrander girl, Algie Darcy - oh, and one or two others. Charnley passed along the hall below and went into the Oak Parlour. The Ostrander girl said there was a ghastly look on his face and his eyes were staring - but, of course, that is nonsense - she couldn't even see his face from where we were - but he did walk in a hunched way, as if he had the weight of the world on his shoulders. One of the girls called to him - she was somebody's governess, I think, whom Lady Charnley had included in the party out of kindness. She was looking for him with a message.
She called out 'Lord Charnley, Lady Charnley wants to know -' He paid no attention and went into the Oak Parlour and slammed the door and we heard the key turn in the lock. Then, one minute after, we heard the shot.
"We rushed down to the hall. There is another door from the Oak Parlour leading into the Terrace Room. We tried that but it was locked, too. In the end we had to break the door down. Charnley was lying on the floor - dead - with a pistol close beside his right hand.
Now, what could that have been but suicide? Accident? Don't tell me.