“Can you throw any light upon it, Sir?” said the Superintendent, respectfully, at last, when the Doctor had finished his examination, and still Ellesborough did not speak.

The Captain looked up.

“Her husband did it”—­he said, quietly—­“the man who was her husband.”

A shudder of surprise ran through the room.

“Did I hear you right, Sir?” said the Superintendent.  “Miss Henderson passed for unmarried.”

“She married a man called Roger Delane in Canada,” said Ellesborough, in the same monotonous voice.  “She divorced him—­for cruelty and adultery—­two years ago.  A few days since he waylaid her in the dark, and threatened her.  I didn’t know this till she wrote to me to-day.  She said that she was afraid of him—­that she thought he was mad—­and I came over at once to see how I could protect her.  We were engaged to be married.”

The Superintendent drew a furtive hand across his eyes.  Then he produced his note-book, and took the evidence in order.  Hastings came in from a lantern search of the farm-buildings, the hill-side, and the nearest fringes of wood, to report that he had found no trace of the murderer.  The news, however, had by this time spread through the village, and the kitchen was full of persons who had hurried to the farm—­Old Halsey and John Dempsey among them—­to tell what they knew, and had seen.  Ellesborough roused himself from his stupor, and came to assist the police in the preliminary examination of witnesses and inspection of the farm.  Once he and Janet passed each other, but they did not attempt to speak.  Each indeed shrank from the other.  A word of pity would have been merely a deepened agony.

But the farm emptied at last.  A body of police had been sent out to scout the woods, to watch the roads and the railway stations.  Ellesborough and Hastings had lifted the dead woman upon a temporary bier which had been raised in the sitting-room.  Then Hastings had drawn Ellesborough away, and Janet, with a village mother, had rendered the last offices.

When Ellesborough re-entered, he found a white vision, lying in a bare room, from which all traces of ordinary living had been as far as possible cleared away.  Only the Christmas roses which Rachel had gathered that afternoon were now on her breast.  Her hands were folded over them.  Her beautiful hair lay unbound on the pillow—­Janet’s trembling hands had refused to cut it.

At sight of Ellesborough, Janet rose from her kneeling posture beside the dead, as white and frozen almost as Rachel herself—­with something in her hand—­a small book.  She held it out to Ellesborough.

“The Superintendent asked my leave to go into her room—­in case there was anything which could help them.  He brought me this.  She had been writing in it—­He asked me to look at it.  I did—­just enough to see—­that no one had any right to it—­but you.  She wrote it I think about an hour before you came.  It was her last word.”