“Murdered!”
“Yes; and I⸺”
He fixed his eyes on me, and put his hand up to his throat. Nino was
half Neapolitan, and I saw a man being hanged. I picked up my cigar
with a hand that slightly shook.
“But,” I said, “I always thought Lady Inley and you were very happy
together.”
It sounded banal, even ridiculous, but I hardly knew what to say. I was
startled. The tolling of the bell, too, was getting on my nerves.
“One doesn’t write such things,” he said. “You’ve been abroad for
years.”
“It’s all right now?”
He nodded.
“I suppose so. Vere has never had the least suspicion.”
He drew his chair closer to mine, and was about to go on speaking when
the servants came in with the coffee.
“Who’s the bell tolling for, Hurst?” he said to the butler.
“I couldn’t say, my lord.”
When the servants had gone Inley continued, at first in a calmer voice:
“Miss Bassett lived in the red cottage just beyond the gate of
the South Lodge from time immemorial. You generally came to us in
Scotland, I know, but I should think you must have seen her.”
Suddenly a recollection flashed upon me—a recollection of a long, flat
figure, a drab face, thin hair coming away from a wrinkled forehead
under a mushroom hat, flapping, old-fashioned golden earrings.
“Not the person I used to call ‘the Plank’?” I said.
“Did you?”
He thought for a moment.
“Yes; I believe you did. I’d forgotten.”
“She was always in church twenty minutes before the service began, and
always dropped her hymn-book coming out if there were visitors in the
Abbey pew!”
“Yes, yes; that’s it. Miss Bassett is very nervous in little ways.”
“I remember her now perfectly. And you say she⸺”