“He didn’t say. In fact, I didn’t even see him, or know he was going. I noticed that he wasn’t in the garden at noon, and the tool-shed was closed; so I went to the cottage and found a note addressed to myself. It was rather pathetic. He just wrote that since there was nothing to keep him here now, he was going back. He didn’t say where, but it was probably to the Orient. There was a month’s wages due to him to-day, and he didn’t want them. Then he thanked me for treating him decently, said he was glad I was going to do what I told Blunt I proposed to do, and that was all, except a postscript about the Lady Hillingdons.”
“Poor Martin!” said Jean under her breath.
“And that other man?” added her mother.
“He will be free to-morrow, and he also will go.”
“To Burma?”
“I think so. He’s being detained till then on a technical charge only. He looks different now, with none of his former spring and activity. That’s because he knows what is going to be done. He seems dazed, and in a queer way almost horrified, as though it were sacrilege. It was the same way with him at the inquest, which was very short, considering everything. Burke, on the other hand, is like another man and bursting with importance. He expects to be regarded as an authority on unusual cases, and probably will be. There’s a great demand for his photograph already.”
“And what did the inquest result in?” she asked timidly.
“Only that the poor woman died at her own hands while under temporary insanity. There could be no other conclusion. Martin was not charged with anything before, so there was really nothing he needed to be cleared of. His evidence, as well as that of Blunt, was taken and accepted, and a statement will most likely be issued about what took place here two years ago. Martin was afraid he would be prosecuted for perjury, but the fact that it was his own wife gets him free of that. So really the matter is closed now, and it’s just a case of living down what is always bound to continue for a little while after a thing of this sort. If I were you I wouldn’t read the papers for a few days, and then it will be replaced by something else.”
He broke off, pitched his mind as far as possible from the subject, then remembered that there was one duty still to perform to close the affair for all time.
“I had a note from Mrs. Thursby this morning,” said Edith musingly. “She wrote that they would be passing this afternoon, and might they come in.”