“Well, I sometimes take a turn or two, just to keep in practice. But it’s awful slow work all alone. If you like, dear, I’ll get you a pair from Clancehurst and you can take a turn with me.”
“It wouldn’t be worth while I think,” she answered. “In point of fact I’m feeling rather too much of a worm for hard exercise just now, and the ice will probably vanish any day.”
They wandered on, over the crisp frozen woodland path, and then he pointed out the scene of the stranger’s immersion and rescue. Melian looked at it with vivid interest.
“It must have been a lively undertaking, Uncle Seward,” she commented. “And that you should only just have heard his call for help? And then—him dying afterwards. Poor man, I wonder who he was.”
“So do I—did rather—for you can’t go on wondering for ever. But that idiot, Nashby, has still more than a suspicion that I murdered him. By the way, Melian, you remember I said there were reasons why I couldn’t come up to Town to fetch you; well, there it is. I’ve been practically under police supervision ever since. If I had gone up to London they’d have concluded I’d bolted, and started all Scotland Yard on the spot. How’s that?”
“How’s that? They must be idiots.”
“Yes. That’s near the ‘bull.’ But Nashby, though an excellent county police inspector, imagines himself a very real Sherlock Holmes whose light is hidden in a bushel called Clancehurst; consequently there being no earthly motive for me making away with the stranger, therefore I must have made away with him—according to Nashby.”
“But, Uncle Seward. Do you really mean to say you’re suspected of murdering the man?”
“Well, more than half—by Nashby. I don’t know that any one else shares his opinion. In fact, I don’t think they do. Look. Here’s the place where I hauled him out.”
They had come near the head of the pond. In the weeks of frost that had supervened there were still traces in the ice of that midnight tragedy. Melian looked at them with wide eyed wonderment.