"You don't know she did. You don't even believe she did."
"Whether she did or not, who would kill her, and why?"
"Ah, if you come to the why and wherefore, I can't answer you—not yet."
"Besides," I went on, "the writing on the message left at the West Street office was her writing."
"Perhaps it was only a good imitation—you can't be absolutely sure that you've ever seen a sample of her writing. There's nothing to prove that she wrote either the note or the message."
"But Curtiss identified them—he was sure the writing was hers."
"Curtiss wasn't in a condition to be sure of anything. But suppose it was hers. She may have wished to blind her mother and Curtiss completely—she may have wished them to think that she had really gone abroad—she must have foreseen that you would trace the telegram. She may have done all that before she came back here——"
"Came back here?" I repeated, suddenly finding a dozen arguments against my own theory of half an hour before. "Walk into the lion's jaws? Nonsense, Godfrey! Place herself in the power of the people who, I suppose you think, killed her!"
"I don't think they killed her," Godfrey said composedly. "My belief is that she killed herself to escape her husband—to get out of the tangle in which she'd involved herself."
"Her husband! You cling to the husband then, do you?"