“Don’t let us anticipate such a thing. Redway will not be able to enter the Hall without some very good excuse, that’s very certain. Up to the present only two persons are aware that you were out in the Park all night—the man whom I afterwards found with the Frenchwoman, and myself.”
“Ah! yes, thanks to you I succeeded in returning home as though I had only been out for an early walk. The manner in which you accomplished it was most ingenious. It has freed me from suspicion. Yet in the footmarks has arisen another and much more serious matter.”
“The boots you must leave to me. I will get rid of them, never fear,” I assured her; and she pressed the gloved hand I held, as though to confirm her trust in me.
Yet was I acting as accessory to a foul and dastardly crime. A man, unarmed and unsuspecting, had been cruelly and secretly done to death, and I, because I loved her, was seeking by all means in my power to throw the police off the scent and dispel even those grave suspicions that were so strongly increasing in my own mind daily, nay hourly.
Walking at her side I tried to argue with myself. But I was too loyal to her. That face drawn and haggard, the paleness of which even her veil failed to hide, was the countenance of a woman whose heart was torn with conflicting emotions—one whose enemies had triumphed, leaving her friendless, crushed—and guilty before the face of the world.
We went on, past the smithy, into Stanion village, an old-world place with its grey church-spire the most prominent figure in the landscape. The sun was setting, and our long shadows lay in front of us upon the dusty highway.
Young Sampson, the squire of Ashton, over near Oundle, whirled past us in his ten-horse Panhard, enveloping us in a cloud of dust, passing before he became aware of who we were. Then we turned into the rectory, where in the cool little drawing-room Lolita had a brief conversation with the worthy rector’s wife concerning a forthcoming sale of work. Oh! those everlasting jumble sales and sales of work.
As she sat there, her veil raised, coolly discussing such things as stalls, stall-holders, fancy needlework and church expenses, she smiled sweetly and certainly did not in the least present the woeful picture that she had done as we passed through the Chase. They even discussed the tragic discovery in the park. With the well-bred woman’s natural tact she could control her outward appearance marvellously. The wife of the estimable rector would certainly never have dreamed the subject of our conversation a quarter of an hour before. They strolled across the tennis lawn together, and her neat figure and graceful swinging carriage was surely not that of a woman suspected of a heartless and brutal assassination.
Yet when I argued coldly and methodically with myself; when I recollected her admission, and her eager anxiety to get rid of those boots with the small high heels, I could not disguise from myself the hard fact that if she were not the actual assassin she was, at any rate, an accessory.
There had been some strong motive why that young man should die. That was plain, and without the slightest shadow of doubt.