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"There's nothing to prevent it, to be sure," answered Drillford. "But Mr. Viner, you can't get over the fact that this fellow had Ashton's diamond ring in his possession!" "How do I how do you know how he came into possession of it?" demanded Viner. "And then that knife!" exclaimed Drillford. "Look here! I've got it. What sort of thing is that for an innocent, harmless man to carry about him?
Might it not have been that Ashton had been murdered for some quite different motive, and that the murderer had hastily removed the watch, chain, purse, and rings from the body with the idea of diverting suspicion, and in his haste had dropped one of the rings? "If only one knew more about Ashton and his affairs!" mused Viner. "Even his own people don't seem to know much."
"I live close by you," he said. "If there is anything that I can do, or that my aunt Miss Penkridge, who lives with me, can do? Perhaps you will let me call in the morning." The girl looked at him steadily and frankly. "Thank you, Mr. Viner," she said. "It would be very kind if you would. We've no men folk yes, please do."
Pawle made no reference during dinner to the matter which had brought Viner and himself to the Ellingham Arms. He devoted all his attention and energies to the pleasures of the table; he praised the grilled soles and roast mutton and grew enthusiastic over some old Burgundy which Mrs. Summers strongly recommended.
"Possible!" said Armitstead. "Doesn't it strike you as strange, though," suggested Viner, "that the first news of this diamond comes from Van Hoeren? One would have thought that Ashton would have mentioned it and shown it to Miss Wickham and Mrs. Killenhall. Yet apparently he never did." "Yes, that does seem odd," asserted Mr. Pawle. "But there seems to be no end of oddity in this case.
"There are going to be strange revelations, Richard Viner, my boy! You said at the beginning of this that you'd suddenly got plunged into the middle of things well, in my opinion, we're now coming to the end of things, and I'm going to do my bit to bring it about."
The doors were set flush with the walls Viner, who often walked through that passage at night, and who had something of a whimsical fancy, had thought more than once that after nightfall the doors looked as if they had never been opened, never shut. There was an air of queer, cloistral or prisonlike security in their very look.
Look here! if Wickham was really Lord Marketstoke, and that girl across the hall is his daughter, she's probably I say probably, for I don't know if the succession in this case goes with the female line Countess of Ellingham, in her own right!" Viner looked his surprise. "Is that really so would it be so?" he asked. "It may be I'm not sure," replied Mr. Pawle.
The silvery chime of the clock on the mantelpiece caused Miss Penkridge, at this point, to bring her work and her words to a summary conclusion. Hurrying her knitting into the hand-bag which she carried at her belt, she rose, kissed her nephew and departed bedward; while Viner, after refilling his pipe, proceeded to carry out another nightly proceeding which had become a habit.
Miss Penkridge called to him from the drawing-room as he was running upstairs; he turned into the room to find her in company with two ladies dismal, pathetic figures in very plain and obviously countrified garments, both in tears and evident great distress, who, as Viner walked in, rose from their chairs and gazed at him sadly and wistfully.
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