father was driven to do away with himself, I am extremely sorry—but what can one do about it?”
“I do not think so,” I said. “I believe, and these letters afford strong evidence to my mind, that my father was cruelly and deliberately murdered by Lathom at Margaret Harrison’s instigation. And I mean to prove it.”
“Murdered?” he cried. “Good God, you can’t mean that! That’s absolutely impossible. Lathom may be a bit of a rotter in some ways, but he’s not a murderer. I’ll swear he isn’t that. You’re absolutely mistaken.”
“Will you read the letters?”
“No,” he said. “Look here. You’re a man of the world. If things have got to this point, I don’t mind admitting that Lathom did have some sort of an affair with Mrs. Harrison. I did what I could to make him drop it, but, after all, these things will sometimes happen. I told him it was a poor sort of game to play, and when I got the opportunity—over that Milsom affair—I told him I’d shut up about it on condition he cleared out. He assured me afterwards, in the most solemn way, that it was all finished with. Why, damn it, I asked him about it the very day we went down to Manaton, and he repeated that the whole affair was absolutely over and done with.”
“He was wise,” I said dryly, “since he was taking you down there to view my father’s dead body. Even you might have suspected something if you had gone to The Shack in the knowledge that it was to Lathom’s interest to find what he did find.”
His face changed. I had touched him on the raw somewhere.
“Did you, as a matter of fact, believe Lathom?”
“I believed him—yes.” He turned his pipe thoughtfully over between his fingers. “I believed that the affair had been put an end to. But I was not