“Oh, Warnham: his wife took him, I suppose. She’s a saint, and he eats out of her hand, they say. Well, he was a loose fish, of course, but murder! I don’t see Warnham at that.”
“He has an eye for a woman.”
“Still? I dare say. But good Gad, he can’t have known this lady doctor. Was she pretty?” Reggie nodded. “Well, we might look for a link between them. Not likely, is it?”
“We’re catching at straws,” said Reggie sombrely.
Lomas pushed the papers away. “Confound it, it’s another case without evidence. I suppose it can’t be suicide like that Bigod affair?”
Reggie, who was lighting a cigar, looked up and let the match burn his fingers. “Not suicide. No,” he said. “Was Bigod’s?”
“Well, it was a deuced queer death by misadventure.”
“As you say.” Reggie nodded and wandered dreamily out.
This seems to have been the first time that anyone thought of comparing the Bigod case to the orphanage murder. When the inquest on the lady doctor was held the police had no more evidence to produce than you have heard, and the jury returned a verdict of murder by some person or persons unknown. Newspapers strove to enliven the dull calm of the holiday season by declaiming against the inefficiency of a police force which allowed murderers to remain anonymous, and hashed up the Bigod case again to prove that the fall of Sir Humphrey Bigod into his chalkpit, though called accidental, was just as mysterious as the cut throat of Dr. Hall. And the Hon. Sidney Lomas cursed the man who invented printing.
These assaults certainly did not disturb Reggie Fortune, who has never cared what people say of him. With the help of Joan Amber he found a quiet remote place for the unhappy girl suspected of the murder (Lady Chantry was prettily angry with Miss Amber about that, protesting that she wanted to look after Edith herself), and said he was only in the case as a philanthropist. After which he gave all his time to preparing his house and Miss Amber for married life. But the lady found him dreamy.