“I read the account of the inquest on your father’s death,” she said, speaking very slowly, with her usual drawl, yet with a softer note in her voice, as though out of respect for the dead man. “Does it not seem very strange that the money was left untouched?”
“Yes!” he answered. “Yet, after all, I don’t know. You see, the governor must have closed with the fellow and shown fight before he got that knock on the head. If the thief was really only an ordinary tramp, he’d be scared to death at what he’d done, and probably bolt for his life without stopping to take anything with him.”
“Isn’t it rather surprising to have tramps—in Thorpe?” she asked.
“I have scarcely ever seen one,” he answered.
Wilhelmina turned her head slightly, so that she was now directly facing him. She looked him steadily in the eyes.
“Has it occurred to you, Mr. Hurd,” she asked, “that this young man may not have been a tramp at all, and that his visit to your father may have been on other business than that of robbery?”
He hesitated for a moment.
“My father’s connexions with the outside world,” he said slowly, “were so slight.”
“Yet it has occurred to you?”
“Yes!” he admitted.