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"Are you quite certain of this?" the coroner queried. "Yes, sir. I am here by the direction of the Chief Inspector of Scotland Yard to give evidence. I was engaged upon the case at Kew, and have also made inquiries into the mystery at Neneford." "Then you have suspicion that the deceased was well, a person of bad character?" "We have." "Fools!" growled Ambler.
The letters were dated from Neneford, from Oban, and from various Mediterranean ports, where she had gone yachting with her uncle, Sir Thomas Heaton, the great Lancashire coal-owner. Sometimes she addressed him as "Dearest," at others as "Beloved," usually signing herself "Your Own." So full were they of the ardent passion characteristic of her that they held me in amazement.
"Ah!" remarked the coroner, one of the most acute officials of his class. "Then, in face of this, her letter seems to be more than curious. For aught we know the tragedy at Neneford may have been wilful murder; and we have now the suicide of the assassin?" "That, sir, is the police theory," replied the inspector. "Police theory be hanged!" ejaculated Ambler, almost loud enough to be heard.
Neneford Manor was an ancient, rambling old Queen Anne place, about nine miles from Peterborough on the high road to Leicester.
While he was thus engaged I took up the first letter, and read it through right to the bitter end. It was apparently the last of a long correspondence, for all the letters were arranged chronologically, and this was the last of the packet. Written from Neneford Manor, Northamptonshire, and vaguely dated "Wednesday," as is a woman's habit, it was addressed to Mr. Courtenay, and ran as follows:
Regarded in the light of the knowledge I had gained when down at Neneford, it was, of course, plain that both she and her "dead" husband were anxious to secure Ethelwynn's silence, and believed they could effect this by inducing us to marry. The conspiracy was deeply-laid and ingenious, as indeed was the whole of the amazing plot.
"I know how she adores you; I know how your coldness has crushed all the life out of her. She hides her secret from mother, and for that reason will not come down to Neneford. See her, and return to her; for it is a thousand pities that two lives should be wrecked so completely by some little misunderstanding which will probably be explained away in a dozen words.
The hour after dinner was always her hour of laziness, and she usually spent it in that self-same chair, in that self-same position. She was twenty-five, the youngest daughter of old Thomas Mivart, who was squire of Neneford, in Northamptonshire, a well-known hunting-man of his day, who had died two years ago leaving a widow, a charming lady, who lived alone at the Manor.
Ambler Jevons read the letter, then handed it to me without comment. It was written upon the note-paper I knew so well, stamped with the neat address "Neneford," in black, but bearing no date. What I read was as follows: "Sir, I fail to comprehend the meaning of your words when you followed me into the train at Huntingdon last night.
"Who is this Mary Courtenay, who writes to him from Neneford?" inquired the coroner of the inspector. "Well, sir," the latter responded, "the writer herself is dead. She was found drowned a few days ago near her home under suspicious circumstances." Then the reporters commenced to realize that something extraordinary was underlying the inquiry.
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