CHAPTER 4Autumn Flowers
The dead woman was big-boned and heavy; it took Gamadge a minute or two to get her off the wall, and to lay her down on the mossy earth of the rockery. She had been shot squarely between the eyes, and the bullet had not emerged.
He stood up, turned, and backed against the trunk of the big birch. He was facing as Vega had done, along the rockery path and out upon the lawn, and he knew at once that pursuit of the murderer would be useless. Forty yards down and diagonally to the right, the lower angle of the rose garden, like a section of green wall, cut into his line of vision. Within that section the rifle must have been fired. Even if the murderer had not known that Gamadge was in the offing, concealed for the moment behind shrubs, to stand and fire outside the ro
