“Your silence confused me, puzzled me,” Richards confessed. “In fact—well, you will understand when I tell you that a gold locket fell out of your belt when I unloosened it. As I picked up the locket and placed it by your side on the couch I saw that a gold link fastened to its ring had been forced apart. A few minutes later I went into the library and discovered Austin lying dead on the floor.” He turned to Mrs. Hale. “In stating that I did not know Austin, I told the truth, but I had seen a photograph of him that morning on Judith’s dressing table and the photograph bore his autograph. I was horrified at finding his dead body, and that horror was intensified when, on bending closer, I discovered that a link in his watch chain was bent and twisted—and the link attached to the locket tucked in Judith’s belt had come unmistakably from that chain.”
“Merciful heavens!” Judith gazed at him in horror. “Then you thought—”
“The obvious,” responded Richards. “Your mother had told me that there had been a boy and girl affair between you, that they confidently expected an engagement on your return from Japan—”
“Mother!” Mrs. Hale quailed under Judith’s anger.
“Upon my soul, Judith, you need not take that tone with me,” she objected. “The first intimation we had of your marriage to Joe was a cable announcing it. A nice way to treat parents who had indulged every whim.”
“Need we go into that again, Mother?” protested Judith.
“No; but I was hurt, deeply hurt, and I did not take kindly to having a son-in-law thrust on us.”
“And so you took it out on him by repeating a lot of nonsense,” exclaimed her husband indignantly. “Well, Richards, I suppose you concluded that Judith and Austin quarreled and she had stabbed him, and reached the hall in a fainting condition just as you entered the house?”
“Exactly, sir; Judith’s silence about Austin—for that she had seen him either dead or alive was proved by her possession of the locket, led me to fear a frightful tragedy,” admitted Richards. “In my agony of mind I did the only thing that occurred to me, I took the watch and chain out of Austin’s vest pocket before sending for the coroner, for I knew it was a clew the police would trace to the bitter end.”
“But why did you send the watch to Jennings?” asked Hale. “It was courting discovery.”