“I hate to say anything when the two poor people are dead, but if I must tell the truth, I’m afraid they were not on good terms at all.”
“I can understand what you feel, but I assure you my questions are necessary. Now please tell me what exactly was the trouble between those two?”
“Well,” Ruth said slowly, and an expression almost of pain showed on her face, “they had, I think—what is the phrase?—incompatibility of temperament. Mrs. Roper had a very sharp tongue and she was always nagging at Roper. He used to answer her in a soft tone with the nastiest and most cutting remarks you ever heard. Oh, it was horrible! Roper really was not a nice man, though he was always kind enough to me.”
This was really all that French wanted, but he still persisted.
“Can you by any chance tell me—I’m sorry for asking this question—but can you tell me whether Roper was attached to any other woman? Or if you don’t know that, have you ever heard his wife mention another woman’s name in anger? Just try to think.”
“No, I never heard that.”
“Have you ever heard them quarrelling?”
“Once I did,” Ruth answered reluctantly. “It was dreadful! Roper said, ‘By ——,’ he used a terrible curse—‘I’ll do you in some day if I swing for it!’ And then Mrs. Roper answered so mockingly and bitterly that I had to put my hands over my ears.”
“But she didn’t make any definite accusation?”
“No, but wasn’t it dreadful? The poor people to have felt like that to one another! It must have been a terrible existence for them.”