“Manacled? What a ghastly mystery!” Sedgwick dropped his chin in meditation. “If she wasn’t drowned, then she was murdered and thrown overboard from a boat. Is that it?”
Chester Kent smiled inscrutably. “Suppose you let me do the questioning a while. You can give no clue whatsoever to the identity of your yesterday’s visitor?”
There was the slightest possible hesitation before the artist replied, “None at all.”
“If I find it difficult to believe that, what will the villagers think of it when Elder Dennett returns from Cadystown and tells his story, as he is sure to do?”
“Does Dennett know the woman?”
“No; but it isn’t his fault that he doesn’t. He did his best in the interviewing line when he met her on her way to your place.”
“She wasn’t on her way to my place,” objected Sedgwick.
“Dennett got the notion that she was. Accordingly, with the true home-bred delicacy of our fine old New England stock, he hid behind a bush and watched.”
“Did he overhear our conversation?”
“He was too far away. He saw the attack on you. Now, just fit together these significant bits of fact. The body of a woman, dead by violence, is found on the beach not far from here. The last person, as far as is known, to have seen her alive is yourself. She called on you, and there was a colloquy, apparently vehement, between you, culminating in the assault upon you. She hurried away. One might well guess that later you followed her to her death.”