“Yes, a bitter enemy, to my mind certainly a woman, who wrote the three anonymous letters which led indirectly to the exhumation of Mrs. Emily Garlett.”
As she stared at him, overwhelmed with horror and dismay, he laid before her on her uncle’s writing table the three sinister sheets of paper.
“By rights I ought not to have kept these facsimiles in my possession. But I made up my mind that it would be right for me to keep even that which does not belong to me—if it will help me to save an innocent man.”
Jean gazed down at the first impersonal note, that in which the writer said he felt it his duty to draw the attention of the Head Commissioner of Police to “certain mysterious circumstances surrounding the death of Mrs. Garlett.”
“This,” she said doubtfully, “was perhaps written by some one who really thought there should have been an inquest?”
Kentworthy shook his head.
“You are too kind, my dear young lady. Look at No. 2.”
“But surely this letter was not written by the same person who wrote the first one?” exclaimed Jean, as she gazed at the second, ill-written, comma-less letter.
Then, as she read it over, she grew deeply red. Indeed, she felt as if the words: “The doctor’s niece can tell you why poor Mrs. Garlett’s doctor made no fuss,” had been burnt, with a hot iron, for ever on the tablets of her memory.
“Now look at No. 3—that which purports to be written by the sender of the first letter.”