‘Or the heartache,’ said Lady Dimsdale under her breath. ‘Does it matter which?’
The Baronet deliberately shut up his review, and looking steadily at his hostess, said in a low voice: ‘It was I who wrote the anonymous letter, Mrs Bowood.’
For once in a way, Mrs Bowood nearly pricked her finger. ‘You, Sir Frederick!’
The Baronet inclined his head gravely. ‘Only, I don’t want the circumstance to be generally known.’
‘I won’t mention it for the world. But you do surprise me.’
‘The facts are very simple. I met the real Mrs Boyd in New Orleans soon after her marriage. Later on, I found myself in Mexico. At a ball one evening, I saw among the crowd a lady whom I should certainly have addressed as Mrs Boyd, had not the friend with whom I was told me that she was that lady’s twin-sister. The likeness between them was certainly a very remarkable one. The lady in question was married to a certain Don Diego Riaz, the owner of a large cattle-ranche a few miles away. The matter probably would have escaped my memory, but for a letter received by me a few months later, in which my friend made mention of a recent scandal in the household of Don Riaz. It seems that the señora suddenly disappeared. When found at the end of two days, and taken back home, her husband caused her to be branded on the palm of the left hand with the initials of his name.’
Mrs Bowood shuddered. ‘How thankful I am that I don’t live in Mexico!’
‘Horray!’ shouted Master Tommy. ‘Brave Sir Tristram has chopped off the wizard’s head.’
The flies were still pestering Captain Bowood. ‘Another of ’em!’ he exclaimed as he slapped his forehead for the second time. Then he looked at his hand. ‘What—what? No,’ he said in a tone of disappointment.
Sir Frederick resumed the equable flow of his narrative. ‘A few months later, Don Diego was found dead under somewhat mysterious circumstances. Such things do happen in Mexico now and then. There was a dim suspicion in my mind, I hardly know why, that one sister might be trying to pass herself off as the other, when I sought an interview with the supposed Mrs Boyd yesterday. That suspicion was strengthened by her answers to some of my questions, and was reduced to a certainty when I got sufficiently near to her to perceive the tiny brown mole under her chin, which I remembered having been told was the one distinctive mark between the two sisters; and further, when I noticed how—although she had her gloves on at the time I spoke to her—she had got into the way of keeping her left hand tightly shut, as though she held something inside it which she was unwilling that any one should see. It was the certainty thus arrived at which induced me to write as I did to Mr Boyd.’