What the effect was on me, I need scarcely say. The whole question of Violet’s connection with the case had been reopened. If the astute investigator chose to follow up the clue he would not find it difficult to obtain evidence through the post office that a parcel large enough to contain the incriminating costume had been received by Lady Violet since the discovery of the crime. It might not be possible to trace it to me as the sender, but she might be placed in such a position that only a full confession on my part could clear her. That confession, of course, I had been ready to make all along, the moment it could do her the least service. My difficulty had been to make it without involving her as what the law calls an accessory before the fact. How could my chief, how could Inspector Charles, fail to draw the inference that we had acted in collusion, and that she had lent me her disguise knowing the use I meant to make of it?
The torturing problem racked my brain the whole time that Sir Frank was explaining the situation to Lord Ledbury. The explanation was a painful one. He did his best to soften the ugliest features, but it could not be concealed that Lady Violet had consulted a doctor without the knowledge of her father or her chaperon, that the doctor had died in suspicious circumstances, and that some suspicion had attached to the wearer of a fancy dress similar to the one spread out before us.
The shock would have been a terrible one for any father. It must have been doubly so for a man who had lived for so many years out of the world, ignoring the changes that had come about since his youth. The whole story must have taken him out of his bearings. The society in which night clubs flourish, and girls as young as Violet are found in them, was as strange to him as it would have been to any parent of the Victorian age.
I could see his mood turning from surprise and bewilderment into growing fury as he listened. And his anger was no longer directed against Tarleton and myself.
“It comes to this, that my daughter’s name is mixed up with a murder case,” he exploded at last. “If she is not actually under suspicion her clothes are. Violet!” The stricken girl turned beseeching eyes on him. “Unless you can assure me that you had no more to do with this business than I had, you shan’t pass another night under this roof.”
The injustice of it nearly stung me into speech. The Earl had done nothing to deserve his daughter’s confidence. He had let her grow up a stranger to him. He had handed her over to a mercenary with no qualifications beyond those of a drill-sergeant or a prison warder. And he was ablaze with wrath because she had grown into a living creature with blood in her veins, instead of a wooden doll.
Violet’s eyes filled with tears.
“What do you want me to say?” she implored. “I didn’t even know that Dr. Weathered was dead till these gentlemen told me.”
“You knew him, it seems. What did you go to him for? You haven’t been ill.”
I began to feel anxious for myself as well as her. But she replied with unexpected spirit.