'I can't tell.'
'There must have been. Where's he buried?'
'I don't know.'
'Don't know where your own husband's buried?'
'I didn't ask. All I wanted to do was to get them out of the house, because I knew that his blood was on their hands.'
'Without going so far as that--and if I were you I shouldn't be quite so, what I may call, virulent--I do think that there are circumstances about the case which it would be as well to look into. The position, so far as I understand, is this. Your husband's been away from his family for--how long?'
'They said fifteen years.'
Fifteen years; we'll say, for reasons of his own. All that time he never went near them, though he must have known exactly where they were, and all about them; so that his reasons for keeping away must have been tolerably strong. Suddenly a friend--who seems to have taken an uncommon interest in him--sees him, we'll say, engaged in a remarkable line of business. He's so conscious that your husband, if he knows who he is, won't see him, that he bribes me to slip him in as plain John Smith. On the Sunday there's an interview between them, at which we don't know what took place; and on the Monday he returns to his family. By the way, did he return to his family.'
'I don't know.'
'If he did, it seems--queer; his arriving at such a sudden resolution after knowing for fifteen years just where they could be found. He must have had strong reasons; it's only right that Mr. Howarth should tell you clearly what those reasons were. On the day of his return, he dies; of a disease he never had. His health seems to have had a quick change for the worse directly he got back to the bosom of his family. However you look at it, it's a queer start all the way along. I should like to see that medical certificate. I've heard of some funny ones, but that must have been an oddity worth looking at. I should also like to have a peep at the man who gave it. Where did your husband die?'