They parted. Brett was promptly admitted by Mrs. Crowe, and walked rapidly up the avenue.
Winter watched his retreating figure.
“He’s smart, I know he’s smart,” mused the detective. “But he doesn’t know everything about this affair. He doesn’t know, I’ll be bound, that David Hume-Frazer waited for his cousin that night outside the library. I didn’t know it—worse luck!—until after he was acquitted. And he doesn’t know that Miss Nellie Layton didn’t reach home until 1.30 a.m., though she left the ball at 12.15, and her house is, so to speak, a minute’s walk distant. And she was in a carriage. Oh, there’s more in this case than meets the eye! I can’t say which would please me most, to find out the real murderer, if Hume didn’t do it, or prove Mr. Brett to be in the wrong!”
[Chapter VII]
Husband and Wife
Brett did not hurry on his way to the Hall. Already things were in a whirl, and the confusion was so great that he was momentarily unable to map out a definite line of action.
The relations between Capella and his wife were evidently strained almost to breaking point, and it was this very fact which caused him the greatest perplexity.
They had been married little more than six months. They were an extraordinarily handsome couple, apparently well suited to each other by temperament and mutual sympathies, whilst their means were ample enough to permit them to live under any conditions they might choose, and gratify personal hobbies to the fullest extent.
What, then, could have happened to divide them so completely?