“You will forgive me if I seem insistent,” he went on. “But, as you know, this is a very serious matter for Leslie. Can you think of any one, in the past, who might possibly have harboured a grudge against your sister?”
Miss Allen hesitated, her clear eyes very troubled.
“I’d better be frank with you,” she said at last. “You’ll probably think what I am about to say almost indecent, but I’ve never shirked the truth in my life and I want to leave no stone unturned to help that boy. You met my sister at Staveley, I believe, Sir Edward, and I think you will understand what I am trying to tell you. You may not know that she was divorced by her first husband and would have been divorced by her second if he had not died in the nick of time. It isn’t pleasant for me to say this and I hope it need not go any further, but that is the kind of woman she was. I don’t judge her, and I suppose it was largely a matter of temperament. She was spoiled, too, as a child. But she was a woman who was bound to have enemies, both male and female, and she had some queer friends, too. If her first husband were not dead I should have been very much inclined to put this down to him. He went to pieces, altogether, after she left him, and became just the kind of half-mad, reckless creature that might end in the dock. Thank goodness, he is out of it, but she has made many friends and many enemies since his day.”
“You know of no one in particular?” pressed Kean eagerly. “Is there nothing she said, at any time, that would suggest any one?”
But Miss Allen shook her head.
“You must remember that I was not in her confidence. We have never been intimate, and for the last ten years I have seen very little of her. I did not like her ways or her friends and I told her so. As a matter of fact, I was surprised when she proposed this visit herself. She told me when she arrived that she was economizing and wanted to put in a week somewhere in between two visits.”
“She said nothing else that might possibly be a clue? Will you search your memory very carefully, Miss Allen? There may be something that seemed quite unimportant at the time.”
He leaned forward, watching her anxiously.
“There was one thing. I didn’t take much account of it at the time and I don’t now. It was her way to make exaggerated statements. But, when she spoke of economizing, she said that, anyhow, it wouldn’t last long. She was out to make a lot of money; in fact, was practically certain of it. I asked her whether it wasn’t just another of her ‘sure things,’ for she was a born gambler, you know. And she said it was as sure as death. I’ve remembered her words since.”
“As sure as death,” echoed Kean softly. “What irony!”