“The only way to bring this about is to give my work the substantial backing of a confession by the murderer. This I intend to obtain.
“I cannot but think that, if I succeed, my work is finished and the agreement of even the most sceptical assured.
“A. R. Gethryn.”
¹ Colonel Gethryn is surely too modest here. [↩︎]
² The Red Thumb Mark, by R. Austin Freeman. [↩︎]
Chapter XVIII.
Enter Fairy Godmother
1
Dinner that night had been a melancholy business for the sisters. During the day the anodyne of action had brought them at times almost to cheerfulness; but from the moment when they had left the chambers of the great Marshall’s junior, their spirits had begun steadily to evaporate.
Of the two, perhaps Lucia suffered the most. She was older. She had not the ingenuousness which enabled Dora to take at their face value the reassurance of barristers and the like. And she suffered, though she would barely admit it to herself, from a complication of anxieties.