“Do you know if Mr. Hart had any enemies?” asked the Inspector.
“A man in his profession comes into intimate relations with many people whom he could not call his friends,” replied Hugh. “But I am not acquainted with any of his clients. As a private friend I always found him kind and generous.”
“Could you supply me with any details concerning his private life?” asked the pressman.
“I am scarcely in a position to do so,” replied Hugh, in a manner that precluded importunity.
He felt sick at heart, unhinged, and longed to be free from the sordid horror of the house. His own hidden yet intimate connection with the tragedy of the night oppressed him like an incubus. It was he who had started the poor old man upon a train of thought and emotion that had kept him from his bed, where the murderer, if safe-robbery had been his only aim, might not have sought him. It was he who was responsible for the unguarded window by which the murderer had entered. And, then, the fact that he had been beneath the same roof discussing with the daughter her inheritance, while the father was being done to death downstairs, loomed grotesquely hideous before his eyes. It was like a situation in some vulgar melodrama where simultaneous action is represented in two separate and adjacent interiors.
At last he escaped police officials and reporters and found himself in the Heath Road, glad to breathe the outer air again, grey and misty as it was, covering the heath like a pall. Outside the Merriams, he paused, seized with a sudden desire for the comfort of Irene’s voice and the sympathy of her clear eyes. Mere intimacy, too, required that he should inform her of the catastrophe. He entered with the latch-key which he possessed by virtue of his intimacy, and knocked at the door of the smoking-room, where Irene always worked in the mornings. As soon as he appeared on the threshold, she rose quickly from her writing-table.
“You have come to tell me—I know it. The whole of Sunnington knows it—a dreadful thing—that poor little girl!”
“I have just come from the house,” he said, gravely. “I had a short interview with her. It is a terrible shock, of course, but she is bearing it pretty well—better than I should have expected. You know I was dining there yesterday, so I was nearly the last person who saw him alive. For that reason they came to fetch me this morning.”
“Tell me what you know about it,” she said, drawing a chair towards him. He sat down and put her in possession of the facts, as far as they were known to the police. She listened intently, sitting by her writing-table, supporting her chin on her hand.
“And have they no clue at all?”