“It might be a good preliminary to a better understanding of one another.  You think Winter is an unscrupulous ruffian.  He described you to me as a swine not two hours ago.  Now, you are both wrong.  Winter is the best living police detective, and a most fair-minded one.  He will be a valuable ally.  Before many days are over you will be deeply in his debt in every sense of the word.  On the other hand, you, Hume, are a much-wronged man, whom Winter must help to regain his rightful position.  This is one of the occasions when Justice is compelled to take the bandage off her eyes.  She may be impartial, but she is often blind.  Now be friends, and let us start from that basis.”

Silently the two men exchanged a hearty grip.

“Excellent!” cried the barrister.  “Hume, take Winter with you in front.  I will seat myself beside the groom, and please oblige me, both of you, by not addressing a word to me between here and Stowmarket.”

Hume and the detective got along comfortably once the ice was broken.  Naturally, they steered clear of all reference to the tragedy in the presence of the servant.  Their talk dealt chiefly with sporting matters.

Brett, carried swiftly along the level road, kept his eyes fixed on Beechcroft and its contiguous hamlet until they vanished in the middle distance.

“This is the most curious inquiry I was ever engaged in,” he communed.  “Winter, of course, will fasten on to Capella like a horse leech when he knows the facts.  Yet Capella is neither a coward nor an ordinary villain.  For some ridiculous reason, I have a sneaking sympathy with him.  Had he stormed and blustered when I pitched into him to-day I would have thought less of him.  And his wife!  What mysterious workings of Fate brought those two together and then disunited them?  They become fascinated one with the other whilst the brother’s corpse is still palpitating beneath that terrible stroke.  They get married, with not unreasonable haste, but no sooner do they reach Beechcroft, a house of evil import if ever bricks and mortar had such a character, than they are driven asunder by some malign influence.

“And now, after eighteen months, I am asked to take up the tangled clues, if such may be said to exist.  It is a difficult, perhaps an impossible, undertaking.  Yet if I have done so much in a day, what may not happen in a fortnight!”

Long afterwards, recalling that soliloquy, he wondered whether or not, were he suddenly endowed with the gift of prophecy, he would, nevertheless, have pursued his quest.  He never could tell.

Once securely entrenched in a private sitting-room of the Stowmarket Hotel, the three men began to discuss crime and tobacco.

Mr. Winter commenced by being confidential and professional.

“Now, Mr. Hume,” he said, “as misunderstandings have been cleared, to some extent, by Mr. Brett’s remarks, I will, with your permission, ask you a few questions.”