"True. We ought to part as soon as possible. What do they think of your absence from Hammersmith?"
"Oh, they know my home is burned up, but I put in an appearance now and then and collect up a few premiums just to show myself."
"I wonder what the girl told the police?" Lilla remarked thoughtfully.
"Some story which they, no doubt, put down to be a cock-and-bull statement—about the locked room, most probably. She might have heard Lionel moving about, or coughing, before I got him away from there. If so the noise would naturally excite her suspicion."
"What about the man Durrant?"
"Oh, we needn't trouble about him. It will be months before he can get back again, and when he does, he'll find none of us here, the girl dead—of natural causes, of course—and the house being rebuilt. We have nothing to fear from him, providing we can get rid of the girl."
"And that must be done at once," the handsome woman repeated. "While she is alive she will be a constant menace to us."
Next morning, when he left Pont Street, he went to the City, and, knowing that Marigold always went out at a quarter to one to her lunch, he waited outside the bank.
At last she came, a neatly-dressed and dainty figure of the true type of business girl, and at the corner of Fenchurch Street he met her as though by accident, and raised his hat.
"Why, Mr. Boyne!" she exclaimed in surprise.