“If the decision rests with me, then I say—do what you feel right.”
Moving up closer to him, she whispered: “The only thing that matters to me—surely you know it—is our love. Nothing can take that away. After all, we’re not bound to go on living in Terriford.”
“That’s true!” he exclaimed. “All the same, remember that if you feel the slightest doubt I’ll put aside my wish.”
“I feel not the slightest doubt. On the contrary, I’m quite sure,” she answered, without a tremor in her voice, “that whatever you feel should be done will be well done.”
Big Ben was booming out the hour of half-past ten as Harry Garlett was ushered into one of the bare waiting rooms of the Criminal Investigation Department. And it seemed to him a long time before the door opened again to admit the man he had asked to see.
Dr. Wilson was a good-humoured, cheerful-looking Scot, very much on the alert, and, if the truth be told, though it was a truth mercifully concealed from Garlett, a man sufficiently interested in human nature to feel a considerable thrill at seeing face to face a human being he was strongly inclined to believe a successful murderer.
“I’m told you’ve specially asked to see me, Mr. Garlett. So I take it you’ve not seen our mutual friend, Dr. Maclean? He spent a couple of hours here yesterday, and I think I may go as far as to assure you that unless some new and unexpected development should take place, the matter concerning which Mr. Kentworthy came down to Terriford will go no further.”
“Does that mean,” asked Harry Garlett quietly, “that I may rest assured that no order for the exhumation of my late wife will ever be issued?”
The Scotsman looked at him keenly. “We could not give such an assurance to any living man, Mr. Garlett. Not even,” he smiled grimly, “to the Lord Chancellor or the Archbishop of Canterbury.”
Then the speaker’s whole manner changed—it became grave, official. “Perhaps,” he went on, “I had better send for my colleague, and, may I add, my superior, Mr. Braithwaite? He will tell you exactly how the matter stands.”