"Well," confessed Hurd, nursing his chin, "Pash and I went to search the Gwynne Street house to find, if possible, the story alluded to in the scrap of paper Deborah Junk found. We couldn't drop across anything of that sort, but in Norman's bedroom, which nobody ever entered, we found brandy bottles by the score. Under the bed, ranged along the walls, filling cupboards, stowed away in boxes. I had the curiosity to count them. Those we found, ran up to five hundred, and Lord knows how many more he must have got rid of when he found the bottles crowding him inconveniently."
"I expect he got drunk every night," said Paul, thinking. "When he locked up Sylvia and Deborah in the upper room—I can understand now why he did so—he could go to the cellar and take possession of the shop key left on the nail by Bart. Then, free from all intrusion, he could drink till reeling. Not that I think he ever did reel," went on Beecot, mindful of what Mrs. Krill had said; "he could stand a lot, and I expect the brandy only converted him into a demon."
"And a clever business man," said Hurd. "You know Aaron Norman was not clever over the books. Bart sold those, but from all accounts he was a Shylock when dealing, after seven o'clock, in the pawnbroking way. I understand now. Sober, he was a timid fool; drunk, he was a bold, clever villain."
"My poor Sylvia, what a father," sighed Paul; "but this crime—"
"I'll tell you about it. Lemuel Krill and his wife kept 'The Red Pig' at Christchurch, a little public house it is, on the outskirts of the town, frequented by farm-laborers and such-like. The business was pretty good, but the couple didn't look to making their fortune. Mrs. Krill was a farmer's daughter."
"A Buckinghamshire farmer," said Paul.
"How do you know? oh!"—on receiving information—"Mrs. Krill told you so? Well, considering the murder of Lady Rachel, she would have done better to hold her tongue and have commenced life with her dead husband's money under a new name. She's a clever woman, too," mused Hurd, "I can't understand her being so unnecessarily frank."
"Never mind, go on," said Paul, impatiently.
Hurd returned to his seat and re-filled his pipe. "Well, then," he continued, "Krill got drunk and gave his wife great trouble. Sometimes he thrashed her and blacked her eyes, and he treated their daughter badly too."
"How old was the daughter?"