"Personally I am inclined to blame Holymead himself for the
predicament in which he was placed. If he had gone to the police after
the murder was discovered, told them the story of his visit to Sir Horace
that night, and invited investigation into the truth of it, all would
have been well."
"No," said Crewe in a voice which indicated a determination not to have
himself absolved at the expense of another. "The fact that he did not do
what he ought to have done does not mitigate my sin of having had the
wrong man arrested. The mistake I made was in not going to see him before
the warrant was taken out. If I had had a quiet talk with him I think I
would have been able to discover a flaw in my case against him. What
made me confident it was flawless was the fact that both his wife and her
French cousin believed him to be guilty. Mademoiselle Chiron followed
Holymead from the country on the 18th of August with the intention of
averting a tragedy. She arrived at Riversbrook too late for that, but in
time to see Sir Horace expire, and naturally she thought that Holymead
had shot him. When Mrs. Holymead realised that I also suspected her
husband and had accumulated some evidence against him, she sent
Mademoiselle Chiron to me with a concocted story of how the murder had
been committed by a more or less mythical husband belonging to
Mademoiselle's past.
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