"Has he confessed to you?
How long have you known it?"
"I have known it only a few minutes," she said. "Will you tell me how you
got on the track and all you have done? I am greatly interested. You have
been wonderfully clever to find out. I should never have guessed Mr.
Holymead had anything to do with it--I should never have thought it
possible. When you have finished I will tell you how I came to know. The
story is extremely simple--and sordid."
The fact that the key of the mystery had been in her hands only a few
minutes was a solace to Crewe, as it detracted but little from the story
he had to tell of patient investigations extending over weeks.
He pieced together the story of the tragedy as he had unravelled it.
Hill, he said, had conceived the idea of blackmailing her father after he
had discovered the existence of some letters in a secret drawer of Sir
Horace's desk. The fact that Sir Horace had kept these letters instead of
destroying them as he had destroyed other letters of a somewhat similar
kind showed that he was very much infatuated with the lady who wrote
them. That lady, as doubtless Miss Fewbanks had guessed, was Mrs.
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