“And I think, Stobb,” concluded the solicitor, turning to one of the inquiry agents, “I think you’d better tell Mr. Brereton what you found out at Woking, and then Leykin can tell us what he brought to light elsewhere.”
Stobb, a big, cheery-faced man, who looked like a highly respectable publican, turned to Brereton with a smile.
“It was a very easy job, sir,” he said. “I found out all about the lady and her connection with Woking in a very few hours. There are plenty of folk at Woking who remember Miss Pett—she gave you the mere facts of her residence there correctly enough. But—naturally—she didn’t tell you more than the mere facts, the surface, as it were. Now, I got at everything. Miss Pett was housekeeper at Woking to a Major Stilman, a retired officer of an infantry regiment. All the time she was with him—some considerable period—he was more or less of an invalid, and he was well known to suffer terribly from some form of neuralgia. He got drugs to alleviate the pain of that neuralgia from every chemist in the place, one time or another. And one day, Major Stilman was found dead in bed, with some of these drugs by his bedside. Of course an inquest was held, and, equally of course, the evidence of doctors and chemists being what it was, a verdict of death from misadventure—overdose of the stuff, you know—was returned. Against Miss Pett there appears to have been no suspicion in Woking at that time—and for the matter of that,” concluded Mr. Stobb drily, “I don’t know that there is now.”
“You have some yourself?” suggested Brereton.
“I went into things further,” answered Mr. Stobb, with the ghost of a wink. “I found out how things were left—by Stilman. Stilman had nothing but his pension, and a capital sum of about two thousand pounds. He left that two thousand, and the furniture of his house, to Miss Pett. The will had been executed about a twelvemonth before Stilman died. It was proved as quickly as could be after his death, and of course Miss Pett got her legacy. She sold the furniture—and left the neighbourhood.”
“What is your theory?” asked Brereton.
Mr. Stobb nodded across the table at Carfax.
“Not my business to say what my theories are, Mr. Brereton,” he answered. “All I had to do was to find out facts, and report them to Mr. Carfax and Mr. Wraythwaite.”
“All the same,” said Brereton quietly, “you think it quite possible that Miss Pett, knowing that Stilman took these strong doses, and having a pecuniary motive, gave him a still stronger one? Come, now!”
Stobb smiled, rubbed his chin and looked at Carfax. And Carfax pointed to Stobb’s partner, a very quiet, observant man who had listened with a sly expression on his face.
“Your turn, Leykin,” he said. “Tell the result of your inquiries.”
Leykin was one of those men who possess soft voices and slow speech. Invited to play his part, he looked at Brereton as if he were half apologizing for anything he had to say.
“Well,” he said, “of course, sir, what Miss Pett told you about her posts at two London hotels was quite right. She had been storekeeper at one, and linen-keeper at another—before she went to Major Stilman. There was nothing against her at either of those places. But of course I wanted to know more about her than that. Now she said in answer to you that before she went to the first of those hotels she had lived at home with her father, a Sussex farmer. So she had—but it was a long time before. She had spent ten years in India between leaving home and going to the Royal Belvedere. She went out to India as a nurse in an officer’s family. And while she was in India she was charged with strangling a fellow-servant—a Eurasian girl who had excited her jealousy.”
Brereton started again at that, and he turned a sharp glance on Carfax, who nodded emphatically and signed to Leykin to proceed.
“I have the report of that affair in my pocket,” continued Leykin, more softly and slowly than ever. “It’s worth reading, Mr. Brereton, and perhaps you’ll amuse yourself with it sometime. But I can give you the gist of it in a few words. Pett was evidently in love with her master’s orderly. He wasn’t in love with her. She became madly jealous of this Eurasian girl, who was under-nurse. The Eurasian girl was found near the house one night with a cord tightly twisted round her neck—dead, of course. There were no other signs of violence, but some gold ornaments which the girl wore had disappeared. Pett was tried—and she was discharged, for she set up an alibi—of a sort that wouldn’t have satisfied me,” remarked Leykin in an aside. “But there was a queer bit of evidence given which you may think of use now. One of the witnesses said that Pett had been much interested in reading some book about the methods of the Thugs, and had talked in the servants’ quarters of how they strangled their victims with shawls of the finest silk. Now this Eurasian girl had been strangled with a silk handkerchief—and if that handkerchief could only have been traced to Pett, she’d have been found guilty. But, as I said, she was found not guilty—and she left her place at once and evidently returned to England. That’s all, sir.”
“Stobb has a matter that might be mentioned,” said Carfax, glancing at the other inquiry agent.
“Well, it’s not much, Mr. Brereton,” said Stobb. “It’s merely that we’ve ascertained that Kitely had left all he had to this woman, and that—”
“I know that,” interrupted Brereton. “She made no concealment of it. Or,
