A thrill of excitement and wonder ran through the onlookers. Her handsome face was ashen pale, and her breast, beneath her blouse of cool-looking muslin, rose and fell quickly, showing how intense was her agitation.
“And what causes you to believe this?” asked the Coroner, raising his brows in interrogation.
“I have suspicions,” she answered in a low voice, striving to remain calm, and glancing quickly around the silent assembly.
“You suspect some person of having been guilty of murder?” he asked, interested.
“Not exactly that,” she said quickly. “That Mr Ogle was murdered I feel confident, but who committed the crime I am unaware. It is a mystery. Knowing Mr Ogle so well as I did, he entrusted to me knowledge of certain facts that he strenuously kept secret from others. Yet I cannot conceive who would profit by his death.”
At this point the inspector of police rose and expressed a desire to know, through the Coroner, whether she had quarrelled with Mr Ogle.
“The day prior to his death we had a few words,” she faltered.
“Upon what subject?” asked the Coroner.
She at first refused to reply, but after being pressed, said, “We quarrelled about my engagement to Mr Deedes.”
So she acknowledged with her own lips that the dead man had been my bitter enemy, as I, too late, had discovered.