Mr. Kentworthy had built great hopes on an interview with Agatha Cheale; but though on two occasions he had managed to force himself into her presence, she had, while coldly civil, replied to his questions: “I have been subpœnaed by the prosecution, and I understand that it would be quite out of order to give you any information. Besides, I could only tell you exactly what I told them.”
With Miss Prince he had again become on surprisingly friendly terms. They often discussed the case, and to him she always professed she kept an open mind. Yet Mr. Kentworthy felt sure that she knew something not to Harry Garlett’s credit. Once or twice he had thought her on the point of confiding to him what this was. But at the last moment she always quickly drew back, and made up her mind to be silent.
But if on friendly terms with Miss Prince, the inquiry agent was not on friendly terms with Lucy Warren. Again and again he tried to make the girl amplify her former statement to him. But all she would say now was: “I’m very sorry I said anything to you about it! Maybe it was not Mr. Garlett at all that was in the wood. It’s easy enough to make a mistake at night.”
She looked unhappy, scornful, and embittered with life, and one day he casually received a hint as to why that was so, from the village postmistress:
“There be some as says Miss Cheale’s brother, the gentleman who was Mrs. Warren’s lodger at the Thatched Farm, made up to Lucy. If that’s so, he’s gone and left her high and dry! Mind you, I don’t say that it’s true, but there be some as says so.”
He decided that there must be something in it. The girl looked as if she had been crossed in love.
At last it seemed as if Mr. Kentworthy had left the village for good. He had done everything that could be done there in the way of inquiry and suggestion, and he made up his mind to investigate the whole case from the angle of Harry Garlett’s life as a popular cricketer, welcome in many a great country house, and indeed everywhere where the national game has its experts and devotees.
But he had been gone only some ten days when there arrived for Jean Bower the following letter:
Dear Miss Bower,
I promised to let you know when Sir Harold Anstey would be back in town. I learn that he arrived home from the south of France yesterday. He is going away somewhere for the week-end, but he will be in his chambers in King’s Bench Walk from Tuesday onward.