Marjorie Blair got to her feet. She was ghost-white; but her voice and eyes were steady, as she faced Kent.
“I must understand this all,” she said. “Wilfrid’s body is where?”
“In Annalaka churchyard.”
“Then who—what is buried in his grave at Hedgerow House?”
“Nothing,” said Alexander Blair.
“A mock funeral!”
“My dear,” said the man—he seemed to have grown suddenly old under the unspoken arraignment—“I could not tell you what I thought the truth. I thought then that Wilfrid had encountered Mr. Sedgwick, and that—that there had been a fight in which he was killed. Rather than face the scandal of a murder trial, a scandal in which the family name would have been dragged through the mire of the public prints again, I chose the part of deceit. I’d have bribed a hundred officers of the law rather than have had you dragged to the witness-stand, and have been compelled to give testimony myself. There has been enough of public shame in my life.”
“But you made me believe that Mr. Sedgwick killed Wilfrid!” she accused.
“I believed it myself,” he retorted.
“But what basis had you for suspecting me of the crime?” cried Sedgwick, turning to Marjorie Blair. “You didn’t know of his visit to me in women’s clothes. You knew nothing of the quarrel, it seems, until just now. For what possible reason, in your belief, should I have killed him?”