I strolled beside the pair in the garden until my love took leave of her hostess, and then we walked home in the calm golden glow of the sundown.
Before the dressing-bell rang I surreptitiously carried my old suit-case, empty, up to her room, and half-an-hour later fetched it down. It was packed full of all her French boots, and having locked it securely I tied upon it an address-label inscribed to myself to be left at St. Pancras cloak-room “till called for.” Then I rang for a servant, and dispatched it to Kettering station.
The blazing August days went slowly by. The body of the nameless victim had been laid in its grave in Sibberton churchyard, and the inquiries conducted by the obsequious Redway resulted in nothing. As was to be expected, he and his assistants haunted the village continually, endeavouring to gather all they could, but fortunately no suspicion was cast upon the sweet woman whom I loved. An active search was made for the boots with the Louis XV heels, in which Pink, the doctor, joined, but it never once occurred to them that they had belonged to Lolita. Or, if it did, the theory had no doubt been dismissed as a wild and unfounded one.
Eager to escape from the place which was undoubtedly so full of tragic memory, Lolita, in the early days of September, went up to Strathpeffer to stay with her aunt, Lady Clayton, as was her habit each year.
On the morning just before she left, however, she came to my room ready dressed for her departure, and again, for the first time since our walk to Stanion, referred to the tragedy.
“Recollect, Willoughby, I am now entirely in your hands,” she said, standing at the window with her eyes fixed aimlessly across the broad level park. “I cannot bear to remain here now, for I feel every moment that I am being watched, suspected—that one day that awful person Redway will enter my room with—perhaps a warrant for my arrest.”
“There is no evidence,” I pointed out, first ascertaining that there were no eavesdroppers in the corridor outside. “We have been able to efface everything. The police are utterly puzzled.”
“Thanks to you,” she said, turning her great blue eyes sweetly upon me. Surely she did not at the moment present the appearance of a murderess, and yet the circumstances all pointed to one fact—that there was a motive in the death of that young man who had remained unidentified. “You told me the other day,” she went on, “that the necklet had been pawned. My connexion with the poor young fellow may be established through that. You see I do not conceal my fears from you, Willoughby—my only friend,” she added.
“You need fear nothing in that direction,” I responded. “I purchased the necklet, and I have it at this moment safely at home.”
“You have!” she cried, a great weight lifted from her mind. “Ah! you seem to have left nothing undone to secure my safety.”