“Yes.”
“That would be impossible.”
“Why so?”
“Unfortunately, one of the first things I did upon arriving home yesterday evening was to apply a match to the papers in the grate, and they have all been consumed.”
Eric shrugged his shoulders.
“That’s hard luck, I take it, but men of my line never cry over spilt milk. What’s the use? Now, regarding this scrap—it is signed Barbara. Have you any idea who the author is?”
“Yes, certainly—a young married lady who lives back of us. I have always entertained much respect for Mrs. Goodwin, and am surprised to think she would enter into a conspiracy with Lillian to deceive me.”
The detective hardly knew what to think.
Here was a man whom he had known and considered a first-rate fellow in the past, grieving over the fact that his wife was keeping something from him, when, all the time, he was nursing a secret within his guilty heart.
What was Darrell to make of it?