“ ‘Was the chauffeur with the car before the lady came out?’
“ ‘It seemed a curious thing, but Mrs. Borham declared that there was no one with the car. Presumably the man was in the hotel having a drink. You see he would have a long wait, and his mistress would hardly be in a position to wig him for it, considering that he could scarcely help seeing what she was up to.’
“ ‘I see. Well, what happened next?’
“ ‘Just before leaving, Mrs. Borham wheeled her pram right past the hotel, and when she was passing the door her eye was caught by an envelope lying in the gutter immediately opposite. On the off chance that the lady had dropped it while getting into the car, she picked it up. It turned out to be empty, but on the outside was written, “Mr. J. Marwell, c/o A. D. Spencer, Esq.,” and then followed an address at some well-known Kensington flats. Next morning she came to me with her story and the envelope.’
“ ‘Dropped by the chauffeur, I suppose?’
“ ‘By Jove, you’re quite right! I put the matter into the hands of an inquiry agent, and found that Mrs. Spencer corresponded to the description of the mysterious lady. Also Spencer’s chauffeur was named Marwell.’
“ ‘And Borham?’
“ ‘Ah, now we come to the most mysterious and extraordinary part of the whole business. Not a single trace was ever seen or heard of Borham again! I admit there were difficulties in the way of tracing him. There was obviously no use in tackling Mrs. Spencer direct, for she would simply have denied everything. We might have threatened her with exposure, but Mrs. Borham wouldn’t hear of a public scandal, for in all probability exposure would have meant the Divorce Court for Mrs. Spencer, with Borham’s name and history brought into the business. The people at the hotel denied all knowledge of the whole affair. It was that sort of an hotel, you see. My agent tried Marwell, but he was like a clam. And nobody connected with the Spencers, whom we could get hold of, seemed to have even heard of Mr. Borham.
“ ‘As a final and complete checkmate, the Spencers very shortly afterwards gave up their flat in town, and settled down on an estate he had purchased in Devorset. Our only remaining chance of getting at Borham had been by watching Mrs. Spencer, and now, of course, that was gone.’
“ ‘Has Mrs. Borham never heard anything of her husband again?’
“ ‘Not from that day to this. I heard from her about six months ago. Apparently some other man was wanting to marry her, but that vanished blackguard, Borham, stood in the way. She asked what I should advise. Well, I gave her the best advice I could, but I had to confess that the man had beaten us completely. And now, Mr. Carrington, can you suggest any possible step?’
“I thought for a minute or two, and then I said—
“ ‘You can tell Mrs. Borham that her husband has been dead for eight years.’
“Tuke stared at me very hard indeed. ‘But — how do you know?’ he exclaimed.
“ ‘Borham was Marwell,’ I said, ‘and Marwell met the fate he deserved — very suddenly.’
“After Tuke left me I made certain other inquiries, and here’s the true history of the’ vanished Borham, alias Marwell, from the time he went down to Devorset with the Spencers.
“Mrs. Spencer was infatuated with the scoundrel, and the scoundrel had Mrs. Spencer under his thumb. His latest enterprise, just before he first met her, had been in connection with a fraudulent motor company. You’ll remember of course, that he was a useful engineer, and he was a man who would stoop to anything, and stick at nothing. He applied for the job of Spencer’s chauffeur, and Mrs. S. saw that he got the billet, without raising the faintest suspicion in her husband’s mind. Then he started this double life of young blood and chauffeur, changing clothes at that hotel.
“The next thing was the warning given them by the efforts of Tuke’s agent (who must have been a bit of an ass) to bribe Marwell to give away Borham! Hence the move to Devorset, where they thought they would have an absolutely free hand, and in a very short time the scoundrel found himself in clover. Mrs. Spencer had her scene with her husband, and knew he suspected Wickley. She told Marwell alias Borham, whereupon the man — without telling her — hit upon the ingenious device of going to Spencer and offering to shadow his wife. He thus had three sources of income; his pay as chauffeur, pay from Spencer for acting as spy, and any amount of odd sums from the infatuated woman. Also he lived in comfort, and had a beautiful woman devoted to him. And with Spencer’s suspicions all directed at the wrong man the game seemed safe as houses.
“After a time, however, one small fly got into the ointment — though it seemed only a trifle. Under yet a third name, he started an intrigue with the daughter of a respectable farmer some miles away, and then began to get in a funk of driving his mistress about in the car more than he could help. He belonged to that class of man who seems able to tell an infatuated woman anything without breaking the spell, and he actually had the audacity to tell her this, and suggest meetings in the woods about the place, instead of taking her afield. She provided him with a coat and hat of her husband’s, so that he might pass as Spencer himself if any one caught a glimpse of them; for Spencer was known to come and go constantly between London and his country house, and was also known to be often wandering about his woods when he was at home.”
Carrington rose and planted himself before the fire, looking down upon the three of us who were listening to him; and suddenly and very impressively came to the dénouement of his tale.
“One evening at dusk she came a little late to a rendezvous in a certain wood. It was just across the boundary, so as to add to the chances of not being interrupted — Destiny had seen to that. There she found him stark dead on his face, with the handle of a pruning-knife sticking out of his back. She had thought her husband was in town, but guessed instantly he had come back — and guessed rightly. She thought she recognised his pruning-knife (he had bought two, and given one to Wickley, you’ll remember) — and this time she guessed wrong.
“She hurried back to the house half demented, and found her husband had actually been home, and now had fled. And then she was quite certain who had done the deed. What should she do? Hide her own shame, save her husband’s neck, and smother the scandal! That woman actually took a spade, and in the dark, in that lonely wood, found a bit of loose soil, and got the body hidden somehow. The next evening, she had the nerve to go down again and pile more earth on top, and meanwhile she told the housekeeper that Marwell had been sacked. Nobody else in the house had liked him, and nobody worried what had become of him. And then she wrote that note to her husband — ‘I have done my best for you. Be grateful to me for that,’ and left the house and him for ever.”
“How did you find all those details?” we asked.
“Well, to begin by giving myself a little pat on the back, I came to a pretty correct conclusion at the end of Spencer’s story. One man alone had disappeared from the neighbourhood, and that was the chauffeur Marwell. I judged him to be an obvious rascal from his offer to spy upon the wife. Also I knew that there was nobody in her own station of life who could possibly have been Mrs. Spencer’s lover. Finally, I had learnt that one of Spencer’s coats had been abstracted, which not only accounted for the unknown victim being mistaken for Spencer, but pointed to his having been a member of the household.
“Then came Tuke with his story which confirmed my suspicion, and told me almost everything. And finally, I hunted down Mrs. Spencer, and made her tell me the rest.”