As he did so the monkey, whose feathered hat had fallen in the dust, began to make its inquisitive way to the open door. It was evident that its arm was hurting it. Once or twice, in spite of its eagerness to explore the room beyond the door, it glanced apprehensively over its shoulder at Steerpike, baring its teeth in a nervous grimace. But its resilient nature became dominant and springing off its back legs it clung to the door handle with its nervous little hands. Again Steerpike pressed upon the long pole, this time with more force, and as the door swung ajar the monkey, swinging with it, let go and dropped upon the great mouldering carpet that lay within. But it did not drop alone, for no sooner had its four feet touched the ground than with a sickening thud an axe-head fell from high above the door, severing the long tail of the monkey as it buried its murderous edge in the floor. The shrill and appallingly human scream of the little creature rang through the hollow district, echoing and re-echoing the agony of that moment, while, beside itself with pain, surprise and rage, it tore about the huge room that lay spread before it, leaping from chair to chair, from window-sill to mantelpiece, from cupboard to cupboard, scattering vases, lamps and small objects of all kinds to left and right in its wild circuits.
Into this room, now spattered with the monkey’s blood, Steerpike advanced at once. There was no longer any caution in his bearing. He gave the careering creature not so much as a single glance. Had he done so he might have noticed that on seeing him the monkey halted its flight and was crouched quivering upon the back of a chair. Its eyes were upon him and in them was a moist and lethal hatred, as though all the spleen and gall of the vile tropics was floating there beneath the small grey eyelids. Its pain and its humiliation were laid at the door of the man who had flung it from his shoulder. As it watched its master it bared its teeth and wrung its hands together. The blood dripped freely from the stump of its tail. What had happened to the monkey – what had caused its harrowing outcry was, of course, unknown to Titus, the Doctor and Mr Flay. But the urgency of that human cry lifted them out of their hiding places, and brought them to the door. They saw at once that Steerpike had left this first room and had presumably descended the three or four steps that led to a second apartment. But the monkey caught sight of them at once and ran towards them. When it reached Titus it rose to its back legs and began a series of grimaces, which in any other circumstances would have been amusing enough, but were at that moment almost heartbreaking. But they had no time for it. Too much was at stake. Their nerves were at full stretch. They were all but exhausted and above all they were still in the invidious position of following a man without any warrant or rational excuse. Nevertheless the last half-hour had intensified their suspicions to a high degree. They knew in their hearts that they had been right to follow him. They were now prepared for anything that might unfold.
Their apprehension had grown so dark, their speculation so fantastic that when they crept to the second door and peered into the apartment below, and when they saw in the centre of the great carpet that filled the room the two skeletons lying side by side in their fast decaying dresses of imperial purple, their pulses beat no faster. Their emotions had been over-strained and had gone limp. But their brains raced.
The Doctor, who had been holding his silk handkerchief across his face, had known for some while that there was death in the air. He was also the first to know that they were looking at all that was left of Cora and Clarice Groan. Titus had no idea that he was staring at his aunts. He was simply looking at skeletons. He had never seen skeletons before.
It was a moment or two before Mr Flay remembered the invariable purple of the Twins. That there had been foul play was immediately apparent to them all.
The remoteness of these rooms from the castle; the double-death; the windowless walls; the possession by Steerpike of a key and his familiarity with the corridors of approach – and more than all this, his present behaviour. For as they watched him the young man, never doubting the security of his solitude, began to behave in a way which could only be interpreted by those who watched him as a form of madness, or if not madness, something so eccentric as to tread its arbitrary borderland.
