“I—I’m afraid I cannot,” he replied. “I know nothing about Mr. Faradeane, excepting that he came here, to a cottage called The Dell, a few months ago——”
“When, sir?”
“In May; and that he is distinctly a gentleman, and incapable of the crime laid to his charge.”
“That’s it, sir,” exclaimed the detective; “Mr. Faradeane is a gentleman, as you say, and I’ve never in all my experience known a real, genuine gentleman commit a crime of this kind. In the heat of the moment—in a sudden fit of jealousy, for instance—a gentleman might do it. But this was premeditated.”
“How do you know that?” said Bartley Bradstone, sharply.
The detective looked at him calmly and thoughtfully.
“Because the man who shot this woman went to meet her fully intending to shoot her,” he said, quietly. “What I want to get at is this gentleman’s, Mr. Faradeane’s, motive for getting rid of the woman. That’s what I want to find out.”
“Do you know the woman? Have you identified her?”
It was Bartley Bradstone who asked the question, and he did so with affected indifference, as if he were merely asking from curiosity.
The detective shook his head.