. "But he doesn't know
everything about this affair. He doesn't know, I'll be bound, that David
Hume-Frazer waited for his cousin that night outside the library. I didn't
know it--worse luck!--until after he was acquitted. And he doesn't know
that Miss Nellie Layton didn't reach home until 1.30 a.m., though she left
the ball at 12.15, and her house is, so to speak, a minute's walk distant.
And she was in a carriage. Oh, there's more in this case than meets the
eye! I can't say which would please me most, to find out the real
murderer, if Hume didn't do it, or prove Mr. Brett to be in the wrong!"

CHAPTER VII

HUSBAND AND WIFE

Brett did not hurry on his way to the Hall. Already things were in a
whirl, and the confusion was so great that he was momentarily unable to
map out a definite line of action.

The relations between Capella and his wife were evidently strained almost
to breaking point, and it was this very fact which caused him the greatest
perplexity.

They had been married little more than six months. They were an
extraordinarily handsome couple, apparently well suited to each other by
temperament and mutual sympathies, whilst their means were ample enough to
permit them to live under any conditions they might choose, and gratify
personal hobbies to the fullest extent.

What, then, could have happened to divide them so completely?

Surely not Capella's new-born passion for Helen Layton. Not even a
hot-blooded Southerner could be guilty of such deliberate rascality, such
ineffable folly, during the first few months after his marriage to a
beautiful and wealthy wife.

No, this hypothesis must be rejected. Margaret Capella had drifted apart
from her husband almost as soon as they reached England on their return as
man and wife. Capella, miserable and disillusioned, buried alive in a
country place--for such must existence in Beechcroft mean to a man of his
inclinations--had discovered a startling contrast between his passionate
and moody spouse, and the bright, pleasant-mannered girl whose ill-fortune
it was to create discord between the inmates of the Hall.

This theory did not wholly exonerate the Italian, but it explained a good
deal. The barrister saw no cause as yet to suspect Capella of the young
baronet's murder. Were he guilty of that ghastly crime, his motive must
have been to secure for himself the position he was now deliberately
imperilling--all for a girl's pretty face.

The explanat