“It is nevertheless true,” Peter Ruff assured her. “There is no shadow of doubt about it.”
Lady Mary was staggered. For a few moment she seemed struggling to rearrange her thoughts.
“You see,” Ruff continued, “the fact that Miss Shaw was willing to sup with Austen Abbott tete-a-tete renders it more improbable that she should shoot him in her sitting room, an hour or so later, and then go calmly up to her mother’s room as though nothing had happened.”
Lady Mary had lost some of her confidence, but she was not daunted.
“Even if we have been deceived in the girl,” she said, thoughtfully—“even if she were disposed to flirt with other men—even then there might be a stronger motive than ever for her wishing to get rid of Abbott. He may have become jealous, and threatened her.”
“It is, of course, possible,” Ruff assented, politely. “Your theory would, at any rate, account for your brother’s present attitude.”
She looked at him steadfastly.
“You believe, then,” she said, “that my brother shot Austen Abbott?”
“I do,” he admitted frankly. “So does every man or woman of common sense in London. On the facts as they are stated in the newspapers, with the addition of which I have told you, no other conclusion is possible.”
Lady Mary rose.