“Help you! How?”
“By telling us all you know of the night of the murder. Why were you in the wood that night?”
“I was there to meet the dead man.”
“For what purpose?”
Aurora was silent for some moments, and then looking up with a bold, half-defiant glance, she said suddenly—
“Talbot Bulstrode, before you blame or despise me, remember how the tie that bound me to this man had been broken. The law would have set me free from him, if I had been brave enough to appeal to the law; and was I to suffer all my life because of the mistake I had made in not demanding a release from the man whose gross infidelity entitled me to be divorced from him? Heaven knows I had borne with him patiently enough. I had endured his vulgarity, his insolence, his presumption; I had gone penniless while he spent my father’s money in a gambling-booth on a racecourse, and dinnerless while he drank champagne with cheats and reprobates. Remember this, when you blame me most. I went into the wood that night to meet him for the last time upon this earth. He had promised me that he would emigrate to Australia upon the payment of a certain sum of money.”
“And you went that night to pay it to him?” cried Talbot eagerly.
“I did. He was insolent, as he always was; for he hated me for having discovered that which shut him out from all claim upon my fortune. He hated himself for his folly in not having played his cards better. Angry words passed between us; but it ended in his declaring his intention of starting for Liverpool early the next morning, and—”
“You gave him the money?”
“Yes.”
“But tell me—tell me, Aurora,” cried Talbot, almost too eager to find words, “how long had you left him when you heard the report of the pistol?’
“Not more than ten minutes.”
“John Mellish,” exclaimed Mr. Bulstrode, “was there any money found upon the person of the murdered man?”
“No—yes; I believe there was a little silver,” Mr. Mellish answered vaguely.
“A little silver!” cried Talbot contemptuously. “Aurora, what was the sum you gave James Conyers upon the night of his death?”
“Two thousand pounds.”
“In a cheque?”
“No; in notes.”
“And that money has never been heard of since?”
No; John Mellish declared that he had never heard of it.
“Thank God!” exclaimed Mr. Bulstrode; “we shall find the murderer.”
“What do you mean?” asked John.
“Whoever killed James Conyers, killed him in order to rob him of the money that he had upon him at the time of his death.”
“But who could have known of the money?” asked Aurora.
“Anybody; the pathway through the wood is a public thoroughfare. Your conversation with the murdered man may have been overheard. You talked about the money, I suppose?”
“Yes.”
“Thank God, thank God! Ask your wife’s pardon for the cruel wrong you have done her, John, and then come downstairs with me. It’s past nine, and I dare say Mr. Grimstone is waiting for us. But stay—one word, Aurora. The pistol with which this man was killed was taken from this house, from John’s room. Did you know that?”
“No; how should I know it?” Mrs. Mellish asked naively.
“That fact is against the theory of the murder having been committed by a stranger. Is there any one of the servants whom you could suspect of such a crime, John?”
“No,” answered Mr. Mellish decisively; “not one.”
“And yet the person who committed the murder must have been the person who stole your pistol. You, John, declare that very pistol to have been in your possession upon the morning before the murder.”
“Most certainly.”
“You put John’s guns back into their places upon that morning, Aurora,” said Mr. Bulstrode; “do you remember seeing that particular pistol?”
“No,” Mrs. Mellish answered; “I should not have known it from the others.”
“You did not find any of the servants in the room that morning?”
“Oh, no,” Aurora answered immediately; “Mrs. Powell came into the room while I was there. She was always following me about; and I suppose she had heard me talking to—”
“Talking to whom?”
“To James Conyers’s hanger-on and messenger, Stephen Hargraves—the ‘Softy,’ as they call him.”
“You were talking to him? Then this Stephen Hargraves was in the room that morning?”
“Yes; he brought me a message from the murdered man, and took back my answer.”
“Was he alone in the room?”
“Yes; I found him there when I went in, expecting to find John. I dislike the man—unjustly, perhaps; for he is a poor, half-witted creature, who I dare say scarcely knows right from wrong; and I was angry at seeing him. He must have come in through the window.”
A servant entered the room at this moment. He came to say that Mr. Grimstone had been waiting below for some time, and was anxious to see Mr. Bulstrode.
Talbot and John went downstairs together. They found Mr. Joseph Grimstone sitting at a table in a comfortable room that had lately been sacred to Mrs. Powell, with the shaded lamp drawn close to his elbow, and a greasy little memorandum-book open before him. He was thoughtfully employed making notes in this memorandum-book with a stumpy morsel of lead-pencil—when do these
