“Do you think—” I asked him, after a long pause. “Candidly speaking, have you any suspicion that Dudley Ogle was her lover?”
He knit his brows. For an instant a hard expression played about his mouth, and he drew a long breath.
“I didn’t, of course, know so much of Dudley as you did,” he answered, slowly contemplating the end of his cigar. “But to tell you the honest truth, I always suspected that he loved her. In fact her own evidence at the inquest was sufficient proof of that.”
“His death was an enigma,” I observed.
“Entirely so,” he acquiesced, sighing.
“She alleged that he had been murdered, and there is no room for doubt that she entertained certain very grave suspicions.”
“Of what?”
“Of the identity of the murderer,” I said. “She declared to me, times without number, that she would never rest until she had unravelled the mystery.”
“Her theory was a very wild one,” he laughed. “Personally, I do not entertain it for one moment. The medical opinion that he died from a sudden but natural cause is undoubtedly correct,” he said, replacing his dead cigar between his lips, as, slowly striking a vesta, he re-lit it. Then he added, “Her anxiety to avenge Dudley’s death certainly seems to bear out your suspicion that they were lovers.”
“Then you entirely agree with me?” I cried.