“No,” I said, “but it is another Peculiar Thing.”
We both sat silent with puzzled brows.
“What are your plans, if I may ask?” I said presently.
She lifted her head.
“I’m going to live here for at least another six months!” She said it defiantly. “I don’t want to. I hate the idea of living here. But I think it’s the only thing to be done. Otherwise people will say that I ran away—that I had a guilty conscience.”
“Surely not.”
“Oh! Yes, they will. Especially when—” She paused and then said: “When the six months are up—I am going to marry Lawrence.” Her eyes met mine. “We’re neither of us going to wait any longer.”
“I supposed,” I said, “that that would happen.”
Suddenly she broke down, burying her head in her hands.
“You don’t know how grateful I am to you—you don’t know. We’d said goodbye to each other—he was going away. I feel—I feel so awful about Lucius’s death. If we’d been planning to go away together, and he’d died then—it would be so awful now. But you made us both see how wrong it would be. That’s why I’m grateful.”
“I, too, am thankful,” I said gravely.
“All the same, you know,” she sat up. “Unless the real murderer is found they’ll always think it was Lawrence—oh! Yes, they will. And especially when he marries me.”
“My dear, Dr. Haydock’s evidence made it perfectly clear—”