The venom in her voice was like the bite of a serpent—positively poisonous, and Cleek gave her a quick, keen look.
"Hardly that, Lady Paula. And—well, I don't happen to be well up on these matters at all, the law, y'know, and all that—only the law of criminals, and that's an altogether different thing. No doubt one of the family has put it away. It will turn up in time. Now, please go away before the rest of the constables arrive. You will want every atom of your strength to see this appalling thing through, believe me, and therefore I insist that you harbour it."
She smiled up at him sadly, and turned upon her heel, her trailing pink negligée whisking across the thickly carpeted floor like the tail of some sinuous snake, weighted as it was with one heavy beaded tassel.
"Very well—if you wish," she said quietly, with an arch glance at him; but as she went something white fluttered to the ground in the wake of her, and Cleek, waiting until she had gone, closed the door softly, and then bent down and whisked it up.
It was a handkerchief—a mere wisp of gossamer, with Duchesse lace edge, and the name Paula written in embroidery across one corner of its fragile square.
A little twisted smile flitted across his face as he looked at it, and then suddenly his mouth went grim. This was obviously the handkerchief in question—and she had had it upon her person every moment of the time! So that excuse was a false one, from the start-out. Then, too, a woman who could look archly at another man over her own husband's dead body was surely no woman at all, but a harpy in woman's guise. It was ghoulish, horrible!... And if the excuse were false, what did she come for—in the early hours of the morning, when servants were only just astir in the other wing of the house, and she knew that there was that dead Thing who had been her husband to be confronted? Would a woman face a murdered man for a mere handkerchief?... She would lose a thousand such sooner, from what he knew of the feminine sex.
No, there was some other reason, and that a secret one. Was it the will? But that was already gone. Was it to remove some distinguishing clue which she feared might be found to connect her with this crime?