“Then you assume premeditation?” and Beatrice looked up quickly.
“It would seem so.”
“Then I am sure you will find, Mr. Roberts, that it could not have been either of the two you think. For even if one of them might have done such a thing in the heat of passion, neither, I am positive, ever deliberately premeditated it.”
“What about the letter found in the desk?”
“That,” and Beatrice shook her head emphatically, “that was never meant for Miss Vernon.”
“Yet Mrs. Stannard overheard him say practically the same thing to somebody in the studio, a moment or two before the crime was committed.”
“Joyce thinks she heard that. But Captain Steele, that poor woman scarcely knew what she was saying at that awful inquest, and she—well, she had reason to think there were women in Mr. Stannard’s life, who would be willing,—in fact, who wished him to be divorced from her. She knew this, she knew of that note he had written,—it was not the first of that nature, and she imagined she heard that speech.”
“You make Mr. Stannard out a very bad man, Mrs. Faulkner.”
“I am sorry to speak ill of the dead, but he was not a good man in the ways we are talking of. In other respects, Eric Stannard had few faults. He was upright, honest and generous. He was kind and he was truthful. And he was extraordinarily brave and honourable. But he was inordinately selfish and of sybaritic instincts. He would not try to curb his admiration for a new and pretty face, and though absolutely loyal to his wife in honour and principle he was a flirt and a gallant, much in the way of a butterfly among the flowers. His genius it is not necessary to speak of. He is known here and abroad as one of the greatest artists of the century. And his wide and varied experiences, his cosmopolitan life and his waywardness of character may well have gained him enemies, who in a secret and clever manner found means to take his life.”
“Who will benefit financially by his death?” Captain Steele asked abruptly.