His eyes flashed, he struck his writing-table with his hand.
“What devils some women are! Why, my poor little niece had only just become secretary to the Etna Company when Mrs. Garlett died——”
“She took over her new duties on the 26th of last April,” observed the inspector quietly, “and, from what I can make out, there seems no doubt that Mr. Garlett, who up to then had much neglected his duties as managing director, leaving everything, it appears, to his partner, a certain Mr. Jabez Dodson, began going daily to the Etna China factory.”
Dr. Maclean sat down again. He felt far more disturbed than he would have cared to acknowledge, even to himself.
“I suppose,” he said slowly, “that it would not be fair to ask you the source of this absolutely untrue and poisonous gossip?”
“I don’t say it would be unfair—but I am sure you will understand that it would not be right of me to oblige you.”
“Do you mind telling me exactly what it is you have heard?—narrowing down the point to what you have been told happened before Mrs. Garlett’s death?”
Mr. Kentworthy began to feel sorry he had said anything about that side of his investigations. He had been tempted into indiscretion by his liking for this man, and his growing conviction that Harry Garlett’s wife had died an absolutely natural death.
It was as a friend of these foolish, if honest, people that he had just said what he knew was true. After all, it was perhaps just as well that they should know the kind of gossip floating about.
“The most serious thing I have heard,” he said quietly, “is that your niece and Mr. Garlett occasionally met secretly, late at night, in a little wood which forms part of Mr. Garlett’s property.”