“Ah, yes!” The thin man ceased from searching through his pockets and heaved a sigh. “I lose everything. Suppose I’ll go on losing till the grave shuts down on this body o’ me—and then I’ll lose that. My ’air began to come out before I was twenty—tonics weren’t no good. Now I always ’ave to wear a ’at—do it even in the ’ouse, unless I’m reminded. And then, as you say, there was poor ’Enrietta. I’m always wondering whether I really lost ’er, or whether——”
“Expect she gave you the slip on purpose,” said the fat man. “Best forget it; consider ’er as so much spilt milk.”
“That’s just what I can’t do.” Mr. Hughes clasped his bony hands: “It don’t seem respectful to what’s maybe dead.”
As far as Teddy could make out from their conversation, ’Enrietta had once been Mrs. Hughes. On a trip to Southend she had insisted on taking a swing in a highflyer. To her great annoyance her husband had been too timid to accompany her, and she had had to take it by herself. The last he had seen of her was a flushed face and flapping skirt swooping in daring semi-circles between the heavens and the ground. When the swing had stopped and he pressed through the crowd to claim her, she had vanished.
Perhaps it was the blood on the thin man’s leg that prompted the fat man’s observation. “It might ’ave been that.”
“What?”
The fat man drew his finger across his throat suggestively. “That.” He repeated. “It might ’ave ’appened to your ’Enrietta.”
“Often thought it myself.” Mr. Hughes spoke slowly. “But—but d’you think anybody would suspect that I——?”
“They might.” The fat man rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “It’s usually chaps of your build that does it; as the lofty Mr. Shakespeare puts it, ’I ’ate those lean and ’ungry men.’”
“Very true! Very true! Lefroy was lean and ’ungry. I know, ’cause I once rode with ’im in the same railway carriage.”