“Mrs. Jeffrey’s death was a strange one,” her husband admitted with tardy self-control. “I find myself as much at a loss to understand it as you do, and am therefore quite ready to answer the question you have so openly broached. Not that my answer has any bearing upon the point you wish to make, but because it is your due and my pleasure. I did visit the Moore house, as I certainly had every right to do. The property was my wife’s, and it was for my interest to learn, if I could, the secret of its many crimes.”
“Ah!”
Mr. Jeffrey looked quickly up. “You think that an odd thing for me to do?”
“At night. Yes.”
“Night is the time for such work. I did not care to be seen pottering around there in daylight.”
“No? Yet it would have been so much easier. You would not have had to buy candles or carry a pistol or—”
“I did not carry a pistol. The only pistol carried there was the one with which my demented wife chose to take her life. I do not understand this allusion.”
“It grew out of a misunderstanding of the situation, Mr. Jeffrey; excuse me if I supposed you would be likely to provide yourself with some means of defense in venturing alone upon the scene of so many mysterious deaths.”
“I took no precaution.”
“And needed none, I suppose.”