“Well, the Colonel’s death is a very mysterious affair, at any rate,” I observed.
“Very,” he said. “And one or two evil-tongued people are already suggesting that she might have had a hand in it.”
“That is cruel,” I answered. “She may be unpopular, but that’s no reason why she should be a murderess. I suppose they base their suspicions upon the quarrel of which you told me yesterday.”
“I suppose so. The first Mrs Chetwode was a born lady, but of this woman nobody ever knew anything of who or what she was before he was so misguided as to marry her.”
“Perhaps the police inquiries will throw some light upon that,” I remarked.
“Let’s hope so,” he responded. And then, having finished my breakfast, we went together to the park.
Fortunately, on the previous night, I had been able to slip out and in unobserved, for the landlord had been absent with his wife at a neighbour’s, and was therefore not aware of a fact which might prove damning against me—namely, that I had disguised myself in a suit of secondhand clothes.
The tragedy had been enacted at the bridge I had crossed. I had passed over that very spot, and had actually heard the sound of the assassin’s cough.
Was that a signal to an accomplice? It seemed very much as though there had been two persons lying in wait for the Colonel, and I, having passed at the moment when they expected him, had narrowly escaped being struck down. That cough was possibly the signal that had saved me.
“Pass along, please! Pass along!” said a constable, as I stood staring in wonder at the spot where the body had been found half in the water among the waving reeds.