an,"
he said. "Do you know whether your husband had anything worrying
him--any serious trouble of any kind which would make him likely to
commit suicide?"

"Suicide? Egbert?" cried Olivia, in a tone of such astonishment that, as
far as Mr. Flexen was concerned, the hypothesis of suicide received its
death-blow. "No. I don't know of anything which would have made him
commit suicide."

"Of course he had no money troubles; but were there any domestic troubles
which might have unhinged his mind to that extent?" said Mr. Flexen.

He wished to be able to deal with the hypothesis of suicide, should it be
put forward.

Olivia did not answer immediately. She was thinking hard. The possibility
that her husband had committed suicide, or that any one could suppose
that he had committed suicide, had never entered her head. She perceived,
however, that it was a supposition worth encouraging. At the same time,
she must not seem eager to encourage it.

"But they told me that he'd been murdered," she said.

"We cannot exclude any possibility from a matter like this, and the
possibility of suicide must be taken into account," said Mr. Flexen
quickly. "You don't know of any domestic trouble which might have induced
Lord Loudwater to make an end of himself?"

"No, I don't know of one," said Olivia firmly. "But, of course, he was
sometimes quite mad."

"Mad?" said Mr. Flexen.

"Yes, quite. I told him so last night--just before dinner. He was quite
mad. He said that I had kissed a friend of ours--at least he was a friend
of both of us till he quarrelled with my husband some weeks ago--in the
East wood. He raged about it, and declared he was going to start a
divorce action. But I didn't take much notice of it. He was always
falling into dreadful rages. There was one at breakfast about my cat and
another at lunch about the wine. He fancied it was corked."

Olivia had perceived clearly that since Elizabeth Twitcher had been a
witness of her husband's outburst about Grey, it would be merely foolish
not to be frank about it.

"But the last matter was very much more serious than the matter of the
cat or the wine," said Mr. Flexen. "You don't think that your husband
brooded on it for the rest of the evening and worked himself up into a
dangerous frame of mind?"

Olivia hesitated. She was quite sure that her husband had done nothing of
the kind, for if he had worked himself up into a dangerous frame of mind
he would assuredly have ma