itable. Well, this marriage
didn't mend the lady's manners. She still continued, now and then, to
take her drops in too generous measure. Rumour had it that the successor
to Ferguson followed his predecessor's example and corrected his wife in
the good, old-fashioned way. It was said that the old cat-and-dog life
was started again by these two. However, before they'd been married a
year, the lady ended that episode by quitting life for good. She was
found one night lying at the foot of the cliff in the Kelpies'
Glen--with a broken neck."

"Ah!" said Carver. "I begin to see."

"Now, that Kelpies' Glen," continued Triffitt, "was a sort of ravine
which lay between the town of Jedburgh and the school. It was traversed
by a rough path which lay along the top of one side of it, amongst trees
and crags. At one point, this path was on the very edge of a precipitous
cliff; from that edge there was a sheer drop of some seventy or eighty
feet to a bed of rocks down below, on the edge of a brawling stream. It
was on these rocks that Mrs. Bentham's body was found. She was dead
enough when she was discovered, and the theory was that she had come
along the path above in a drunken condition, had fallen over the low
railings which fenced it in, and so had come to her death."

"Precisely," assented Carver, nodding his head with wise appreciation.
"Her alcoholic tendencies were certainly useful factors in the case."

"Just so--you take my meaning," agreed Triffitt. "Well, at first nobody
saw any reason to doubt this theory, for the lady had been seen
staggering along that path more than once. But she had a brother, a
canny Scot who was not over well pleased when he found that his
sister--who had come into everything that old Ferguson left, which was a
comfortable bit--had made a will not very long before her death in which
she left absolutely everything to her new husband, Francis Bentham. The
brother began to inquire and to investigate--and to cut the story short,
within a fortnight of his wife's death, Bentham was arrested and charged
with her murder."

"On what evidence?" asked Carver.

"Precious little!" answered Triffitt. "Indeed next to none. Still,
there was some. It was proved that he was absent from the house for half
an hour or so about the time that she would be coming along that path;
it was also proved that certain footprints in the clay of the path were
his. He contended that he had been to look for her; he proved that