“Belongs to her!  Her own soul don’t belong to her!”

I was conscious of a growing excitement.  I thought that I was about to learn the very fact which I was seeking, and accordingly: 

“What is the age of Lady Burnham Coverly?” I asked.

“Lady Burnham?  Well, let me see; she were not more’n about twenty-five, I reckon, when Sir Burnham first brought her to the Park.  Them was the days, them was.  These parts ’as changed cruel since I was a young man.  Then it was soon after as Sir Burnham went off to Egypt for government, and eleven years afore he come back again.”

“Did Lady Burnham accompany him to Egypt?” I asked, interestedly.

“Oh, ah, for sure she did.  Poor Mr. Roger was born in Egypt.  It was eight years come October they returned home to Park, and six years come September poor young Mr. Roger died.”

“Then Lady Coverly must be something over forty years of age,” said I musingly.

One of my theories, a wild one, I must confess, was shattered by this piece of information.  In short I had conceived the idea (and the news that Lady Coverly had resided for some years in Egypt had strengthened it) that the woman in the case was none other than the mistress of Friar’s Park!  Her antipathy towards the late baronet had seemed to suggest a motive for the crime.  But it was impossible to reconcile the figure of this lonely and bereaved woman with that of the supernormally agile visitant to my cottage in London, in short, with the possessor of those dreadful green eyes.  I determined to try a new tack, and remembering that the real object of my journey to Upper Crossleys was to learn particulars respecting the early death of Roger Coverly: 

“Did Mr. Roger Coverly die in England?” I inquired.

“Oh, no, sir; he died in foreign parts, but they brought him home to bury him, they did.”

“Do you know of what he died?”

“Oh, ah.  I have heard tell it was some foreign fever like—­took him off sudden, and him only a lad.  It killed poor Sir Burnham, it did.”

“Then Sir Burnham died shortly afterwards?”

“Two years afterwards, and these parts has never been the same since.”

“But what has Dr. Greefe to do with all this?”

“Ah, now you’re asking.  Seven years ago he settled here in the big house up by the Park; part of the Park estate it is; and there he’s been ever since, him and his black servant.”

“Black servant!” I exclaimed.

“Oh, ah, real black he is—­not half-and-half like his master, but as black as a lump o’ coal, an’ ugly—­oh, ah, he’s ugly right enough.  Goes up to the Abbey Inn of a night he do, him and that there Gipsy Hawkins, the prettiest pair o’ rascals in Upper Crossleys.  Drove all the decent folk away from the place, and Martin keeps the best beer about here, too.  If I was Martin,” continued the ancient, truculently, “I’d know what to say to them two, I would; aye, and what to do to ’em,” he added with great ferocity.