"But she may not have seen it before. Let us suppose that she has suddenly found it out. She wants to get rid of the woman. Her brother will not permit it. The invalid, with her weak heart and inability to get about, has no means of enforcing her will. The hated maid is still tied to her. The lady refuses to speak, sulks, takes to drink. Sir Robert in his anger takes her pet spaniel away from her. Does not all this hang together?"
"Well, it might do—so far as it goes."
"Exactly! As far as it goes. How would all that bear upon the visits by night to the old crypt? We can't fit that into our plot."
"No, sir, and there is something more that I can't fit in. Why should Sir Robert want to dig up a dead body?"
Holmes sat up abruptly.
"We only found it out yesterday—after I had written to you. Yesterday Sir Robert had gone to London, so Stephens and I went down to the crypt. It was all in order, sir, except that in one corner was a bit of a human body."
"You informed the police, I suppose?"
Our visitor smiled grimly.
"Well, sir, I think it would hardly interest them. It was just the head and a few bones of a mummy. It may have been a thousand years old. But it wasn't there before. That I'll swear, and so will Stephens. It had been stowed away in a corner and covered over with a board, but that corner had always been empty before."
"What did you do with it?"