ed Captain Stanhill, with a
trace of sarcasm in his mild tones.

"You cannot lay down general rules about murder. An unbalanced human
being, under the influence of hatred, jealousy, or revenge, is no more
amenable to the rules of society than a tiger. But I do not think that
this crime was instigated by one of the guests, because in that case it
would probably have been arranged to be committed later in the evening,
when the members of the house-party were at the house of the Weynes, and
the moat-house was occupied only by the servants. Still, I do not intend
to lose sight of the hypothesis. Another possibility is that one of the
servants was in league with the murderer. A third possibility is that
Mrs. Heredith may have brought in the murderer herself."

"What do you mean?"

"She may have had a lover, and the lover may have murdered her."

"Oh, impossible!" Captain Stanhill repelled the idea with an instinctive
gesture of disgust. "It is too monstrous to suppose that a happily
married young wife would be carrying on an intrigue three months after
her marriage."

"More monstrous things happen every day--human nature being what it is,"
retorted Merrington coolly. "You must remember that we know practically
nothing about her. The people who knew her in London left the house
before they could be questioned; Miss Heredith and her brother have no
knowledge of her past; and her husband is too ill to tell us anything.
Her marriage was apparently a hasty love match--a love match so far as
young Heredith was concerned. So far, we have only two slender facts to
guide us in our estimate of her, which are contained in the two letters
in which young Heredith announced his marriage to his people. According
to those statements, she was an orphan who was earning her living as a
war clerk in the Government department in which young Heredith held his
appointment. That does not carry us very far. During her brief life at
the moat-house she seems to have been reticent about her earlier life.
Miss Heredith is not the type of woman to have questioned her, and,
apparently, she vouchsafed no information. An examination of her boxes
and her writing-table has brought to light nothing in the way of writing
or correspondence to help us. Such a girl--a bachelor girl in London in
war-time--may have had passages in her past life of which her husband
knew nothing--passages which may have an important bearing on her
murder. Not until we have a tho