“It’s very kind of you, but I don’t think it’s necessary. There’s no date on the envelope; evidently it is just an unused one that she slipped the photograph into for safety and I was trying to get a clue as to when she is likely to have received the photograph. As it was at the top and as the receipts under it are for 1926, it looks as if she had put the photograph in fairly recently.”
“Does it suggest anything to you?” she asked.
“It bears an extraordinary resemblance to a man I firmly believe to be dead,” said Fayre slowly. “Of course, it probably is only a chance likeness, but it is so strong that I am going to ask you whether I may borrow the photograph for a day or two.”
“Of course,” agreed Miss Allen readily. “Keep it as long as you like. If, later, I come across anything that throws any light on it, I’ll let you know, but I think I’ve been through all my sister’s papers now.” Fayre stowed the envelope and its content carefully away in his breast pocket. He stayed chatting with Miss Allen for a minute or two and then took his leave. As he was saying good-by he remembered a question he had meant to put to her.
“By the way, you could not tell me anything about the death of your sister’s first husband, I suppose?”
“He died of drink, poor soul,” she said bluntly. “He was a friend of Dr. Gregg’s, you know, and the doctor was with him to the end. He was buried at Putney, I’ve never quite known why, and, as a matter of fact, I went to the funeral.”
“You went to the funeral?” Fayre echoed her words mechanically in his surprise.
“I suppose it was rather an astonishing thing to do,” she admitted, “considering what had happened, but I’d always liked him, though I’d never seen much of him. I had a very painful interview with him after my sister left him and was sorry for him. I was in London when he died and Dr. Gregg wrote to me about the funeral. I don’t know quite why I went, but, somehow, it seemed the decent thing to do. My sister had a lot to answer for there, Mr. Fayre.” Fayre could hear the pain and humiliation in her voice.
“I think you are right about unattached people,” he said gently, “only you forgot to mention that some of them are apt to take the sins as well as the troubles of others on their shoulders.”
“They get there of their own accord,” she said with a rueful smile. “Believe me, they need no taking.” As he was leaving, a thought struck him.