It was bad policy now to attempt disguise.  ’I am the supposed Mrs. Manston,’ she said.  ‘Who are you?’

’I am the officer employed by Mr. Raunham to sift this mystery —­which may be criminal.’  He stretched his limbs, pressed his head, and seemed gradually to awake to a sense of having been incautious in his utterance.  ‘Never you mind who I am,’ he continued.  ’Well, it doesn’t matter now, either—­it will no longer be a secret.’

He stooped for his hat and ran in the direction the steward had taken—­coming back again after the lapse of a minute.

‘It’s only an aggravated assault, after all,’ he said hastily, ’until we have found out for certain what’s buried here.  It may be only a bag of building rubbish; but it may be more.  Come and help me dig.’  He seized the spade with the awkwardness of a town man, and went into the pit, continuing a muttered discourse.  ’It’s no use my running after him single-handed,’ he said.  ’He’s ever so far off by this time.  The best step is to see what is here.’

It was far easier for the detective to re-open the hole than it had been for Manston to form it.  The leaves were raked away, the loam thrown out, and the sack dragged forth.

‘Hold this,’ he said to Anne, whose curiosity still kept her standing near.  He turned on the light of a dark lantern he had brought, and gave it into her hand.

The string which bound the mouth of the sack was now cut.  The officer laid the bag on its side, seized it by the bottom, and jerked forth the contents.  A large package was disclosed, carefully wrapped up in impervious tarpaulin, also well tied.  He was on the point of pulling open the folds at one end, when a light coloured thread of something, hanging on the outside, arrested his eye.  He put his hand upon it; it felt stringy, and adhered to his fingers.  ‘Hold the light close,’ he said.

She held it close.  He raised his hand to the glass, and they both peered at an almost intangible filament he held between his finger and thumb.  It was a long hair; the hair of a woman.

‘God!  I couldn’t believe it—­no, I couldn’t believe it!’ the detective whispered, horror-struck.  ’And I have lost the man for the present through my unbelief.  Let’s get into a sheltered place. . . .  Now wait a minute whilst I prove it.’

He thrust his hand into his waistcoat pocket, and withdrew thence a minute packet of brown paper.  Spreading it out he disclosed, coiled in the middle, another long hair.  It was the hair the clerk’s wife had found on Manston’s pillow nine days before the Carriford fire.  He held the two hairs to the light:  they were both of a pale-brown hue.  He laid them parallel and stretched out his arms:  they were of the same length to a nicety.  The detective turned to Anne.

‘It is the body of his first wife,’ he said quietly.  ’He murdered her, as Mr. Springrove and the rector suspected—­but how and when, God only knows.’