“You see,” she said in her dreamy voice, “they didn’t hate her like I did. And hate makes things easier for you.”
Disappointed in the result of her search, she had deliberately dropped Anne’s earring by the desk.
“Since I knew she had done it, what did it matter? One way was as good as another. She had killed him.”
I sighed a little. There are always some things that Lettice will never see. In some respects she is morally colour blind.
“What are you going to do, Lettice?” I asked.
“When—when it’s all over, I am going abroad.” She hesitated and then went on. “I am going abroad with my mother.”
I looked up, startled.
She nodded.
“Didn’t you ever guess? Mrs. Lestrange is my mother. She is—is dying, you know. She wanted to see me and so she came down here under an assumed name. Dr. Haydock helped her. He’s a very old friend of hers—he was keen about her once—you can see that! In a way, he still is. Men always went batty about mother, I believe. She’s awfully attractive even now. Anyway, Dr. Haydock did everything he could to help her. She didn’t come down here under her own name because of the disgusting way people talk and gossip. She went to see father that night and told him she was dying and had a great longing to see something of me. Father was a beast. He said she’d forfeited all claim, and that I thought she was dead—as though I had ever swallowed that story! Men like father never see an inch before their noses!
“But mother is not the sort to give in. She thought it only decent to go to father first, but when he turned her down so brutally she sent a note to