“But what does it all amount to?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why should he accuse Thoyne?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did Thoyne murder Clevedon?”
“I don’t know.”
“But there must be some reason for those letters.”
“Oh, yes, the reason is plain enough—he had a bitter grudge against Thoyne. His daughter seems to have come a cropper, and he suspected Thoyne—yes, that is why he wrote the letters.”
I told him in a few words what Stillman had discovered regarding Thoyne and Mary Grainger.
“It’s a rum story,” Pepster said thoughtfully. “Of course the child is Thoyne’s, and that would account for the grudge, as you say. But it doesn’t explain why he should accuse Thoyne of murder. He must have had something at the back of his mind. It can’t be wholly an invention.”