“You mustn’t let yourself be worried about this affair, Mary,” I said, “it’s bad enough I know, and pretty sickening happening here and at this time—rotten for Sir Charles and your mother—but hang it all, it might have been a lot worse.”
She looked at me reproachfully. “What do you mean,” she asked, “in what way?”
“Well,” I responded, awkwardly I admit, “it might have been Jack—or—er Captain Arkwright—one of the family you might say—Prescott wasn’t exactly a ‘nearest and dearest.’”
She scanned my face curiously. “No, Bill,” she remarked very quietly, “he wasn’t exactly. But I’ve had to face his mother and I can’t forget that he was our guest and that it was in our house that he met his death—that he came to his death here,” she wrung her hands in the emotion of her distress—“it makes me feel so responsible.”
“Rot!” I exclaimed, “it might have happened to him anywhere—you can’t prevent a crime—now and then.”
“It might have, Bill, but it didn’t. And that’s just all that matters.”
“Again, it might have been worse, too, from the other standpoint.”
“What do you mean?”
“Your mother’s pearls. We’ve recovered them when the odds seemed pretty hopeless.”
“What do they matter? Bill”—she put her hand on my sleeve, “you can do me a favor. Tell Mr. Bathurst I should like to have a chat with him.”