Chapter XIV: Alexis Investigates

Before going to Lancaster Lodge, Alexis goes back to the jail, and spends half an hour with his wife. He feels that it would be cruel to leave her all through the long lonely day. He finds her curiously patient and quiet, resigned to the horror of her position, and touchingly grateful for his interest in her.

‘It is a strange end to all my dreams, Alexis,’ she says sadly. ‘I fancied that when our reconciliation came life would be full of brightness for us. I have comforted myself in many a lonely hour with the thought of our reunion. We should be fabulously rich, free as air, with all the world and its pleasures before us. The reality is strikingly different from the day-dream, is it not? No freedom, no wealth. Our reconciliation finds me a prisoner and a pauper.’

‘The prison will not be for long, dear, and I have fortune enough for both of us. So you need not regret your day-dream about Stephen Trenchard’s wealth, a factor which had no real existence in the sum of our lives.’

‘Why did I not learn wisdom from my spelling-book, that dog’s-eared old spelling-book, with fables for reading lessons?’ says Sibyl, with her faint smile. ‘I am like the dog in the fable, who dropped the substance to snatch the shadow.’

She asks no questions as to his morning’s occupation. She seems in no manner to realize the peril of her situation, and the urgency of prompt action. Perhaps she is more womanly in this hour of trial than she has been at any other crisis of her life. Alexis has forgiven her. That is the one fact she dwells upon most, and the danger and horror of her position touch her lightly. That which she feels most bitterly is to know herself the dupe of her own avarice, fooled to the top of her bent by false appearances, mocked at perhaps in secret by the insolvent Belial of her worship.

‘Love is better than gold or silver, Alexis,’ she says, resting her languid head upon her husband’s shoulder.

‘Poets, philosophers, and sages have been singing that chorus ever since the world began, Sibyl. Yet there are a good many people left who set their affections on filthy lucre, and, however much we may abuse it, that yellow ore which keeps the world moving has some good uses as well as evil ones. And now I must leave you for an hour or two. I have some more business to get through in your lively town. You will not be alone all the afternoon, dear. Dr. Faunthorpe is coming to see you.’

‘Dear uncle Robert! Oh, Alex! how I hate myself when I remember my neglect of that dear good man, while I paid my court to an impostor! And yet, perhaps, I have no right to say that. I have been thinking over the past as I sat here this morning, and I see that I have been self-deceived rather than the dupe of uncle Trenchard. He never told me that he meant to make me his heiress. He never told me that he had a great fortune to leave. It was other people who deceived me. Those Stormonts and their set, always harping upon one string, courting me and flattering me as the heiress elect. I have little right to blame my uncle. He did not know how much I had sacrificed for his sake. He did not know how false and wicked a part I was playing. He was anxious that I should make a rich marriage, that I should profit by the false appearances that surrounded me, and establish myself before he died. He meant kindly by that at any rate.’

‘We will say no harm of the dead, my dear. And now good-bye for a few hours.’

Alexis meets Dr. Faunthorpe on his way out. The good little man has only stopped to perform some necessary duties in the dispensing line before hastening to his niece.

From Redcastle Jail to Lancaster Lodge is only ten minutes’ walk. Alexis has no difficulty in finding the mansion which he came to six months ago in the winter dusk, for Lancaster Lodge has made itself unusually conspicuous to-day, having put on a breastplate of auctioneer’s bills, announcing that all the elegant furniture, brass bedsteads, superior bedding, German spring mattresses, best Brussels, Axminster, velvet pile, and other carpeting, glass, china, pictures, electro-plated goods, valuable library of standard authors, grand piano by Broadwood, patent lawn-mowing machine, knife-cleaning apparatus, and other household effects, together with the valuable lease of the mansion, at a moderate rent, are to be disposed of by public auction on Monday next, July 3rd, and three following days, the whole to be on view on the previous Saturday, admission by catalogue, price one shilling.

This is Thursday, and Alexis resolves to ask for a private view of the mansion. The request may be a little out of order perhaps, but a judicious distribution of half-crowns will, in all probability, remove difficulties. This man, Podmore, the late Mr. Trenchard’s butler, is doubtless in charge of the house.

Alexis makes his application at the lodge gate, where the lodgekeeper’s wife has taken prompt advantage of Mr. Trenchard’s death to hang out her family linen on the laurels and conifers in the shrubbery.

‘It’s a comfort to do a bit of washing in freedom,’ this matron has remarked to her liege lord, the head gardener. ‘Mr. Trenchard were so partikeller.’

‘Partikeller,’ growls the husband. ‘He were a man that allus wanted eighteenpennorth o’ work for a shillin’. I don’t call that there partikeller. Seems to me that there breed’s rayther common.’

Mollified by half-a-crown, the guardians of the gate are of opinion that Mr. Secretan can see the house.

‘It ain’t the day,’ says the gardener, scratching his head doubtfully; ‘you’ll see wot’s wrote up on they bills--Saturday. But if you’re only passin’ through and wanted to see if there’s anythink you’d like to bid for, I dessay as they might strain a pint up at the house. There’s old Podmore, the butler, a very pertikler old party, but still he’s ameliable to reason.’

Alexis, having passed the outer gate of the citadel, goes straight to the hall door, where he finds Mr. Podmore sunning himself on the threshold, cadaverous and flaccid of aspect, as a man who has been living for the last few days upon gin and water, and slovenly in his apparel--as a man who, having retired from official life, feels that he has no occasion to be punctilious in the use of soap and water. To him Alexis makes his request.

‘There are some pictures that I want to see,’ he says, ‘and, as I am only passing through the town, I shall be much obliged if you can let me see them to-day.’

He accompanies the request with a dexterous passage of half a sovereign from his fingers to Podmore’s palm--quite a delicate feat in prestigiation.

Podmore turns his gin-and-watery eyes upon the applicant with a puzzled air, dimly recalling that face and voice as in some wise familiar to him on the blurred page of memory. But memory’s page is so much blotted that he vainly strives to decipher the imperfect record.

‘Ain’t I seen you before somewhere?’ he asks, feebly.

‘Very possibly,’ replies Alexis.

‘You ain’t been a visitor here in the old gentleman’s time?’

‘No.’

‘Then it must have been in some former situation. Yes, you can see the pictures. There’s no harm in that. Not that the pictures are good for much--reg’lar Wardour Street duffers supplied by the upholsterer, old Kabriole, and now he’s served an attachment on the goods as chief creditor. He’s been let in nicely, has old Kabriole. The ’ousekeeper’ll show you round. There’s only me and her left in the ’ouse now, and it’s very lonesome. In fack,’ adds Podmore, confidentially, ‘it’s undermining my spirits. I feel that low, I could shed tears by the pailful.’

‘Yes,’ replies Alexis, watchful of the butler’s countenance. ‘It must be dreary work living in a house where a foul crime has been committed--the foulest of crimes, secret murder.’

Podmore looks uncomfortable at this, but he hardly realizes Mr. Secretan’s idea of a man stricken with the sense of guilt. But then there are some criminals so callous, some men with whom crime is, as it were, a natural development; and from these the agonies of remorse, the throes and convulsions of a guilt-burdened soul, are not to be looked for. Had not Nemesis overtaken William Palmer, in the person of his latest victim’s stepfather, that practised plotter against the lives of his friends and relatives would, doubtless, have gone on driving his profitable trade, and gone down to the grave jaunty and debonnaire, liked and trusted by his comrades, the jolly good fellow of his jovial circle. Be sure no tell-tale muscle of Mr. Palmer’s face assisted the task of detection, no quiver of that iron lip betrayed the hand of the poisoner as he presented the fatal draught to the lips of his friend. Phrenology has declared that in that man’s brain the capacity for pity or remorse was wanting.

‘The ’ousekeeper’ll take you round,’ repeats Podmore, slipping the half-sovereign into his pocket.

Podmore’s eyes are dull and watery, and his breath is flavoured with juniper berries, or it may be turpentine; his limbs are heavy, and he is averse from motion. He calls a thin and vinegar-faced female, whose temper has been soured by a life-long devotion to the kitchen stove, and an apparatus she describes as a ‘bang Mary’--a large metal tray, containing a family of stew-pans of various sizes, in which sauces, glazes, and divers savoury compositions simmer gently in a perpetual warm bath. The bain Marie and the stove together have been too much for Mrs. Skinner’s temper, which is disagreeably suggestive of that fiery region she has so long inhabited.

‘This gentleman wants to have a look round the house,’ says Podmore, in those thick and hazy tones which have become habitual to him.

‘Then he must come on the proper day,’ replies Mrs. Skinner, snappishly.

‘Oh, but it’s all right; he’s got a horder. You’re to show him everythink.’

Mrs. Skinner looks doubtful; but on a solemn wink from the hazy Podmore, yields the point, expectant of largess.

‘You can come this way,’ she says to Alexis, with scant courtesy.

‘I should like to see the room in which Mr. Trenchard died,’ says Alexis, when he has surveyed the drawing-room and dining-room, dismal tabernacles of upholstery.

‘I hope you haven’t come out of curiosity,’ says Mrs. Skinner, reproachfully. ‘It’s the first time _I_ ever lived in a house where there was suspicion of murder, and it’s very trying to my feelings. My father was a respectable tradesman. I wasn’t brought up to this sort of thing.’

‘Curiosity has not brought me here,’ replies Alexis, ‘but I have a particular desire to see the room in which Mr. Trenchard died.’

He is about to say, ‘and to hear all you can tell me about his death,’ but it strikes him that Mrs. Skinner, despite her acid countenance, will talk freely of her own accord presently, not for his gratification, but for the relief of her own pent-up feelings. He politely offers her half a sovereign, which she takes with a curtsey, and as near an approach to a smile as her features can shape.

‘Thank you kindly, sir. I won’t deny that it is acceptable, finding one’s self suddenly out of place, and disappointed of any little legacy one had a right to expect. I’m sure the pains I took with the old gentleman’s curries was quite wearing to my nerves--scraped cocoa-nuts, and prawns, and chutnee, and oysters, and all manner of fiddle-faddle, and his Bombay ducks, and his rubbish; but he’s gone to his last account, and will have to answer for ’em all, I make no doubt, and for his deception towards his servants.’

‘And his favourite niece,’ suggests Alexis. ‘The deception came hardest upon her.’

‘Ah!’ sighs Mrs. Skinner, pursing up her lips. ‘When young folks hold their heads too high, Providence is apt to lay snares and pitfalls for them. We’ve king David’s word for that in the Psalms.’

Alexis remembers that ‘a favourite has no friends.’

The housekeeper, considerably mollified by the stranger’s liberality, leads the way to Mr. Trenchard’s bedchamber, where the furniture has a gloomy and even shabby look since the auctioneer’s men have overhauled it--everything pushed out of its place and twisted the wrong way, defaced with lot numbers, degraded from its pride and pomp. The bedstead heaped with an untidy pile of bedding, bundles of blankets, tumbled counterpane and sheeting. Things that careful housewives think they ought to get very cheaply under such conditions, but which generally cost the feminine bargain-hunter more than if they came straight from a draper’s shop.

Alexis notices the door by the head of the bed.

‘There is a second door to Mr. Trenchard’s room, I see,’ he remarks.

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Was that always unlocked?’

‘Yes, that was kept unlocked for Podmore to come down to give Mr. Trenchard his medicine.’

Mrs. Skinner opens the door and shows Alexis the landing on the back staircase, and the flight of stairs leading to Podmore’s room. There are two more doors that open on to this landing. Alexis inquires about these.

‘That one opens into Mr. Trenchard’s dressing-room,’ replies Mrs. Skinner, ‘and this,’ indicating the further door, ‘into Mr. Pilgrim’s room.’

Alexis opens this last door and looks into Mr. Pilgrim’s apartment, a comfortable bachelor’s room, with another door opening into the gallery at the top of the principal staircase. Lancaster Lodge belongs to a period of domestic architecture in which architects delighted in the multiplication of doors, and if prevented by untoward conditions from putting in real doors consoled themselves by filling in their blank corners with ornamental dummies leading to nowhere.

‘Mr. Trenchard’s room was as easily accessible to Mr. Pilgrim as to the butler,’ says Alexis. ‘And now show me Miss Faunthorpe’s rooms.’

Mrs. Skinner obeys, and Alexis finds that, taking into consideration that Mr. Trenchard’s door of communication with the gallery was locked on the inside on the night of his death, Sibyl could only have entered his apartment by going down the principal staircase, opening a door which Mrs. Skinner declares to have been always locked after ten o’clock in the evening, and the key in her possession, crossing a lobby, and ascending the servants’ staircase.

Stay, there is another way; if Stephen Trenchard’s dressing-room has a door opening on the gallery.

He hastens to ascertain this. No, there are two doors to the dressing-room, but neither communicates with the gallery. One opens into the bedroom, the other on to the landing before mentioned.

This must surely make a strong point in Sibyl’s favour. While all communication between her room and her uncle’s was cut off in the night-time, Joel Pilgrim and Podmore had easy access to the dead man’s bedchamber.

To this argument a counsel for the prosecution might reply that the poison was possibly put ready for the patient’s own hand, on the eve of the murder, mixed with his drink or his medicine.

Yet in the latter case, Podmore, who administered the poison, must have seen its deadly effect; unless the man were, as Alexis supposes, an habitual drunkard, and too far gone on this occasion to take notice of his master’s condition. This seems too much to believe. Even stupid drunkenness would have sense enough to perceive the effect of a deadly and instantaneous poison.

Alexis sees Sibyl’s boudoir, where the prussic acid bottle was found in the work-basket. Might it not, he asks himself, have been taken from that basket full, and returned to it empty, by some other hand than Sibyl’s? And yet how should any one else have known of her possession of the poison?

The housekeeper has been obligingly communicative. She has entered into all the details of Stephen Trenchard’s last illness and death, dwelling on the gloomiest particulars with that ghoul-like relish peculiar to women of her kind. She has described the finding of the body--its awful appearance--Miss Faunthorpe’s mysterious flight, ‘which naturally set folks against her.’

‘You don’t surely believe her to have had anything to do with her uncle’s death?’ cries Alexis.

Mrs. Skinner shakes her head solemnly, till the crape roses and jet ornaments in her cap--she has brought out some dingy weeds laid by from a previous time of mourning--tremble and shiver.

‘I don’t like to express an opinion as a Christian woman,’ she says, ‘but the opinion in Redcastle is that Miss Faunthorpe did it. She had the poison--there’s no denying that--and she got it in an underhand way, and then on the very morning of her uncle’s death she runs away, secretly--and no one knows where she’s gone.’

‘A way to proclaim her guilt, which she would hardly have taken if she were guilty. She would not be so short-sighted as that.’

‘Murderers generally are short-sighted,’ replies Mrs. Skinner, sagely. ‘It’s a merciful dispensation of Providence by which they run their necks into nooses. There’s not much good could be done by the detective police if it wasn’t for the short-sightedness of criminals.’

‘That’s a very wise remark, Mrs. Skinner, and I’m surprised that so sensible a woman as you can imagine that poor girl guilty of a crime which only a hardened sinner could conceive.’

‘There’s no knowing where to look for hardened sinners,’ replies the housekeeper. ‘Ministers wouldn’t tell us about original sin in the pulpit if wickedness wasn’t born with some of us. And as to good looks, they’re no criterion. Black thoughts may lie behind pretty faces as well as ugly ones.’

And Alexis foresees that, with the female community in Redcastle, Sibyl’s beauty will be no certificate of innocence. He pursues the subject no further, seeing that loose conjectures of Mrs. Skinner’s will in no wise help in the unravelling of this tangled skein.

‘I rather wonder,’ he says, thoughtfully, still moving about the empty rooms, and making believe to examine the furniture, ‘that Mr. Trenchard should have employed your fellow-servant as his attendant in illness. I should have supposed from his manner to-day that he was somewhat inclined to drinking.’

‘Ah,’ says Mrs. Skinner. ‘Well, you may think so, for of all the sots that ever was, there never was a stupider sot than Joseph Podmore has been since his master’s death.’

‘Since,’ cries Alexis. ‘Was he sober before then?’

‘Yes, sir. Joseph and me has been fellow-servants here since Mr. Trenchard took this house, three and a half years ago, and I must say that Joseph Podmore has never laid himself open to reproach in all that time. Not but what he liked his beer at dinner and supper, and his tumbler of grog after supper, and a glass of dry sherry wine with his mouthful of bread and cheese between breakfast and dinner, but was never the worse for anything he took.’

‘And since his master’s death----’

‘He has never been properly sober, muddling himself with gin and beer--dog’s nose, he calls it, and the very lowness of the name is enough to set any decent person against the stuff, let alone its being cold and comfortless to the inside, all day long, and that low in his spirits, that it’s a misery to be in his company.’

‘Low-spirited?’ asks Alexis.

‘Awful; and yet, according to his own account, things have prospered with him, for he says he’s going to take a public-house, and begin life as an independent gentleman directly he leaves here; though how he can have saved money to go into business, seeing that he has a wife and two children to keep out of his wages, and she an extravagant drab into the bargain, flaunting about after dark with a Paisley shawl down to her heels, and a black lace bonnet with roses in it, and a baby in one arm and a market basket over the other, which I call out of keeping,--how Podmore can have saved money with such a drag upon him is more than I can account for.’

Again it flashes upon Alexis that this man is the murderer. Every word of Mrs. Skinner’s tends to confirm him in that idea. He pushes his inquiry a stage further.

‘By the way,’ he begins, ‘have you any idea whether Mr. Trenchard had money about him at time of his death? May he not have had a sum of money in his possession at that time--sufficient to offer a temptation to an assassin? Murders have been inspired by very small temptations of that kind.’

‘I know that, sir. But I don’t see how Mr. Trenchard can have had much ready money about him. He had no call for it. He always paid everything by cheque--even servants’ wages. And it wasn’t often that he paid the tradesmen anything except at Christmas-time. I don’t see what he could have wanted with ready money in the house.’

‘You never heard of his keeping money in his room, or saw him open a box, desk, or drawer containing money?’

‘Never.’

‘Had he any valuable jewellery in his possession?’

‘I never saw him wear so much as a diamond ring. His watch was all the jewellery he ever wore, and that was found under his pillow.’

This seems a kind of no thoroughfare. If Mr. Trenchard had no valuables to tempt Podmore’s cupidity, why should the butler have murdered him, and whence the talk about taking a public-house, since it is clear from Mrs. Skinner’s account of Podmore’s domestic responsibilities that he can hardly have saved money. A slatternly wife in a flaunting Paisley shawl, marketing after dark, is as exhaustive a drain upon a husband’s finances as the bottomless bucket of the Danaides.

‘One thing about money I do remember,’ exclaims Mrs. Skinner after a pause; ‘and I must say it struck me as singular after I’d heard about that paper in which Mr. Trenchard declared he had only brought ten thousand pounds from India.’

‘What was that?’ asks Alexis, eagerly.

‘Well, it was the last night but one before his death. I was going up to bed, after locking my downstairs doors and seeing all the others up before me--even to Podmore,--which was always my way, and as I passed this door about ten minutes, or it might have been a quarter of an hour after the others had gone to bed--for I’d been hunting for our tabby cat, which is a troublesome animal to have prowling about at night, though a good mouser and an affectionate disposition, and I was coming up in the dark, the gas being turned off at the main--when I saw master’s door ajar, the door opening on our staircase, you understand. It was just the least bit ajar, leaving a narrow streak of light, and I heard Mr. Pilgrim’s voice speaking as I came upstairs, and then I heard master say, “Now understand clearly, Joel, I must have that money--ten thousand in bank notes--before the wedding. There must be no shilly-shallying. You don’t marry my niece till that money is in my hands. No money, no marriage, remember; and the telegram to wind up the business goes to my Calcutta agents on Saturday unless the money is forthcoming.” He had a very sharp, precise way of speaking, poor old gentleman, and I heard every syllable.’

A new light flashes on Alexis. This Pilgrim, the odious persecutor of his wife, may not he be the murderer? The idea has presented itself to him before, but he has put it aside for want of any motive to ascribe as the mainspring of the action. But there is motive strong enough supplied in these words of Stephen Trenchard’s. This threat to communicate with an agent in Calcutta might mean ruin to Joel Pilgrim. He must have been in some way in Trenchard’s power. And to murder Trenchard would be to cut the knot of the difficulty.

Alexis Secretan’s heart beats loud and fast. He feels as if he were now on the right track. That there is something mysterious--nay, guilty--in the butler’s conduct, he is assured; but the butler may be an accessory before or after the fact, rather than a principal. There is apparent, as yet, no sufficient motive for the butler’s guilt; there is an obvious motive if this Pilgrim be the murderer.

‘The first thing now to be done is to find out all about this man,’ thinks Alexis.

‘Where is Mr. Pilgrim staying?’ he asks. ‘He has not left the town, has he?’

‘No, sir. He is residing at the “Coach and Horses.” He was to have sailed for India directly after his marriage. That’s why things were arranged so sudden. But of course Mr. Trenchard’s death altered all that.’

‘At the “Coach and Horses,”’ says Alexis. ‘That is where I mean to put up myself.’

‘You couldn’t do better, sir. It’s the best hotel in Redcastle.’

And now, having accomplished all he can for the time being, Alexis takes leave of Mrs. Skinner.

‘I should like to have another look at the pictures before I leave the town,’ he says. ‘Perhaps you would not object to my looking round again to-morrow morning?’

‘You are freely welcome, sir, as often as you like. When I see that a gentleman _is_ a gentleman, I’m very happy to oblige him.’

Alexis goes from Lancaster Lodge to the ‘Coach and Horses,’ whence he has addressed his telegram to Messrs. Levison and Levison. He is delighted to find a member of that firm waiting for him in the coffee-room, an undersized gentleman, with a smooth sallow face and keen black eyes, thin lips, compressed and horizontal.

‘A junior in the house,’ thinks Alexis, with a look of disappointment. He would have desired age and experience to guide and aid him in this desperate strait. ‘He looks a shrewd little fellow though, and I dare say he knows his business.’

He takes Mr. Levison off to a private room, orders a bottle of dry sherry, and then proceeds to state his case without delay or waste of words.

Mr. Levison listens with quiet intentness, and makes no remark till the story is finished. Even then he is provokingly slow to express himself. He sits looking at Alexis like the head of Memnon, and compels his client to ring his ideas out of him by the closest questioning; and as he pauses for the space of a minute, looking his stoniest, after each question, this process is rather slow.

‘Do you think Pilgrim is the man?’ asks Alexis.

A long pause. Alexis repeats his question, no gleam of light in Mr. Levison’s countenance indicating that the inquiry has been heard.

‘If he were the man he could have got away by this time.’

Even when Mr. Levison does speak he drops out his words charily through scarcely parted lips, as if they were pearls and diamonds, and he did not like to waste them.

‘True. But he might wish to throw people off the scent by remaining.’

‘Dangerous that. He had ample excuse for going. His Indian voyage was arranged before Mr. Trenchard’s death. He only had to carry out the arrangement. There would have been nothing suspicious in that. He is in this house, you say?’

‘Yes.’

‘That’s convenient. We can keep an eye upon him.’

‘I can’t see how we are to do that,’ grumbles Alexis, provoked by his solicitor’s phlegmatic tone, ‘unless we could see through doors or walls. He may leave Redcastle while we are sitting here.’

‘No, he won’t,’ replies Mr. Levison. ‘I brought a clerk of mine down with me, and he has got the office to look after Pilgrim.’

‘But how could you know anything about him till I told you----’

‘Do you suppose I waited for you to tell me? That’s not our way in Parchment Street. I had a chat with the landlord--heard all about your wife’s arrest, and guessed what I was wanted for, heard all the particulars of the murder, or supposed murder, the inquest held in this house, and so on, and gave my man the office.’

‘And you think that Pilgrim----’

‘I never think, Mr. Secretan; I wait for facts. If I squandered my brains upon thought I should have no brain power left to deal with evidence. We shall hear what comes out at the inquest.’

Alexis has to take this vague comfort for what it is worth, and make the best of it. He and Mr. Levison dine together, and then Alexis goes back to the jail and spends another half-hour with Sibyl, who is low-spirited, but not so anxious or fearful as she might naturally be in so awful a position.

‘Uncle Robert has been here, dear good man,’ she tells Alexis, ‘and has been feeling my pulse, and looking at my tongue, and prescribing tonics, and port wine, and beef tea, and all manner of tiresome things. He quite broke down when he saw me here, and burst into tears--the first I ever saw him shed. It gave me more pain to see him than anything that has happened since last night, when I thought you had shut me out of your heart for ever.’

‘I thought so too, Sibyl; but sorrow has opened the door of my heart and let you in again.’

‘Ah!’ she exclaims, with a little joyful cry, ‘I thought you could not be long unkind. And you have not forgotten those foolish early days when we walked in Kensington Gardens, and you told the children fairy tales.’

‘No, love, I have forgotten nothing.’

‘I will show you something some day, Alex, if ever this dreadful suspicion passes away, and I am free from the charge of murder.’

She shudders at the word, and clings to him for a moment like a frightened child.

‘What will you show me, dear?’

‘A book--such a foolish old book--in which I kept a journal when I first began to care for you. It is all written there, every stupid thing I ever thought about you.’

‘The rise and fall, the ebb and flow, of love. That must be a precious volume, Sibyl. I would give a great deal to see it.’

‘You will laugh----’

‘I am more likely to cry--remembering how Fate has parted us since then.’