Whoso Findeth a Wife

“Then why did you not tell him of Mr Ogle’s declaration?”

“Because they were friends, and I did not wish to arouse animosity between them.”

Slight applause followed this reply, but it was instantly suppressed.

The Coroner, to bring matters to a conclusion, asked, “Now, knowing Mr Ogle as intimately as you did, do you suspect that he might have been murdered?”

She gasped, swayed slowly forward and gripped the corner of the baize-covered table to steady herself.

“Yes,” she answered in a clear but tremulous voice. “I – I believe he was murdered.”

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.

“He wished you to marry him?” suggested the Coroner. She did not answer, but burst into a fit of hysterical tears, and a few moments later was led out of the Court.

“I think, gentlemen,” the Coroner observed, turning to the jury, “no end can be obtained in pursuing this very painful inquiry further. You have heard the evidence, and while on the one hand the exact cause of death has not been established, on the other we have Miss Laing declaring that the unfortunate gentleman was murdered. The evidence certainly does not point to such a conclusion, and there are two courses that may be pursued; either to adjourn the inquiry, or to return an open verdict and leave the elucidation of the mystery in the hands of the police.”

The jury, after consulting among themselves, retired, but only for five minutes, coming back into court and returning an open verdict of “Found dead.”

Then, as the Coroner thanked the twelve tradesmen for their attendance, I rose and crossed to Beck, afterwards walking with him to “The Nook.”

Chapter Eight

“I Dare Not!”

“What do you think of Ella’s statement?” Beck asked, as we were crossing Staines Bridge on our way to Mrs Laing’s.

“I can’t understand it,” I replied.

“Neither can I,” he said. “Girls of her excitable temperament are apt to make statements of that character utterly without foundation. No doubt Dudley was her intimate friend, and finding him dead, her romantic mind at once conjured up visions of murder.”

“Yes. There is a good deal in your argument,” I admitted, with a touch of sorrow at the remembrance that Ogle had aspired to her hand.

“I never spoke to you on the subject, for fear of making mischief, but I have many times been amazed at your blindness when Dudley and Ella used to flirt openly before your very eyes,” he observed, glancing at me.

“Ah! you are right,” I cried angrily. “I foolishly trusted him, believing implicitly in his honour and in Ella’s purity.”

“Of the latter you surely have no cause for suspicion,” he exclaimed quickly.

“I am not so certain,” I replied with bitterness. “The more deeply I attempt to probe this mystery, the more sorrow I heap upon myself. I was happy in the belief that she loved no other man except me, yet apparently she is as tactful as an adventuress, and delights in toying with a man’s affections.”

“Every woman is fickle,” my friend remarked sympathetically. “If she is thrown into the society of one man frequently, and passes idle hours alone with him, she either ends in loving him or hating him. There is little purely platonic friendship between men and women nowadays.”

“Yes, alas!” I echoed, as we entered the carriage drive and passed the well-remembered spot where I had discovered the body. “There is very little indeed.”

A quarter of an hour later I stood alone before the window of the bright morning-room which commanded a beautiful view of the brilliant, sunlit Thames, and the row of tall, swaying poplars and drooping, wind-whitened willows on the opposite shore. I was awaiting Ella, who had, her maid told me, gone to her room.

Presently, pale-faced and trembling, she entered, and, closing the door, moved slowly towards me, stretching forth her hand in silence, her tearful eyes downcast. I grasped the slim, white fingers, and found them cold as marble.

“Geoffrey,” she exclaimed, low and huskily. “Geoffrey, forgive me!”

“Forgive! For what reason?” I inquired sternly, looking at her in admiration, yet determined to be firm. This was, I resolved, to be our last interview.

“Because I – I was foolish and weak, and – ” She paused, sighing deeply.

“Well?” I said cynically. “What other excuse?”

“Yes, yes,” she cried brokenly. “I know they are mean, paltry excuses. I know I am trying to make you believe it was not my own fault, yet – ” and pausing again, she raised her clear blue eyes to mine with passionate glance, “and yet, Geoffrey, I love you in a manner I have loved no other man before.”

“You have a strange way of exhibiting this so-called affection,” I observed coldly. “You actually encouraged the advances of the man in whom I reposed foolish and ill-placed confidence.”

“For a purpose. I never loved him – never,” she protested, trembling.

“You had a reason? A strange one, I should think,” I exclaimed angrily. “Indeed, at this very moment you are mourning the loss of this man.”

“Dudley Ogle was not your enemy, Geoffrey. He was your friend,” she answered, with a tremor in her voice. “Some day I will prove this to you. I cannot now. It is impossible.”

“Why?”

“I dare not!”

“Dare not! What do you fear?” I demanded in surprise, instantly releasing her hand.

“The consequences would be fatal to our love,” she gasped. Then, after a pause, she clutched my arm, and, burying her beautiful face upon my shoulder, sobbed bitterly.

“Our love!” I echoed contemptuously. Notwithstanding the fierceness of my anger, I smoothed her dark gold hair, and presently, when she grew a trifle calmer, endeavoured to discover the meaning of her strange, enigmatical words.

“You cannot know – you will never know – how dearly I have loved you, Geoffrey,” she cried, in answer to my eager questions. “Neither will you ever know how much I have suffered, how hard I have striven for your sake.”

“For my sake! Yet you admit having allowed Dudley Ogle to utter words that I alone had a right to utter!”