“So they might, sir; but would he have the letters?” asked the laundress shrewdly. “Wouldn’t that be the solicitor’s business?”
“You are right, Mrs. Dugget. I see you have profited by your experience in the Temple.”
“I had the curiosity to look at the post-marks on those envelopes, sir. There was over a hundred of ’em, I should think, some whole, and some torn across, and the post-marks told me that they spread over years. They most of ’em looked like tradesmen’s envelopes, and the Camberwell post-mark was on a good many of ’em. That closet hadn’t been cleared out for eight or nine years, to my knowledge, and those envelopes went back for the best part of that time, and the longer I looked at them the more I wondered who Mr. Danvers was.”
“And did you come to any conclusion at last?”
“Well, sir, I had my own idea about it, but it isn’t my place to say what that idea was.”
“Come, come, Mrs. Dugget, you have no employer now, and you are beholden to no one. You are a free agent, and have a perfect right to give expression to your opinion.”
“If I thought it would go no further, sir.”
“It shall go no further.”
“Very well then, sir, to be candid, I thought that James Dalbrook and J. Danvers, Esq., were the same person, and that Mr. Dalbrook had been living in Camberwell Grove under an assumed name.”
“Would not that seem a very curious thing for a professional man in Mr. Dalbrook’s position to do?” inquired Theodore, gravely.