"I suppose you are pleased to see me?" asked Hurd, puffing meditatively at his briar.
Paul nodded. "Very glad," he answered, "that is, if you have done anything about Mrs. Krill?"
"Well," drawled the detective, smiling, "I have been investigating that murder case."
"Lady Rachel Sandal's?" said Beecot, eagerly. "Is it really murder?"
"I think so, though some folks think it suicide. Curious you should have stumbled across that young lord," went on Hurd, musingly, "and more curious still that he should have been in the room with Mrs. Krill without recollecting the name. There was a great fuss made about it at the time."
"Oh, I can understand Lord George," said Beecot, promptly. "The murder, if it is one, took place before he was born, and as there seems to have been some scandal in the matter, the family hushed it up. This young fellow probably gathered scraps of information from old servants, but from what he said to me in the cab, I think he knows very little."
"Quite enough to put me on the track of Lemuel Krill's reason for leaving Christchurch."
"Is that the reason?"
"Yes. Twenty-three years ago he left Christchurch at the very time Lady Rachel was murdered in his public-house. Then he disappeared for a time, and turned up a year later in Gwynne Street with a young wife whom he had married in the meantime."