"So she wrote an anonymous letter calculated to do harm to the unlucky subject thereof?"
"Yes, and sent it to Sir Richard Wayne. Well, once having started she apparently couldn't leave off. Her venom grew, so to speak, by being fed in this manner; and she wrote one letter after another--you know her mother was English, and she was well versed in our tongue--until practically everyone in the parish knew a garbled version of Mrs. Ogden's sordid little story."
"One moment, Chloe." Major Carstairs had a soldier's mind for detail. "How did the woman know that story? I thought no one ever owned to having heard it?"
"No one ever did," said Chloe rather bitterly. "But the explanation is simple after all. Mrs. Ogden had, before I made my appearance on the scene, repeated the tale to another woman in the parish--the young wife of a solicitor whom she had 'taken up' with great fervour on her first arrival in Littlefield; and this woman had repeated the story to her French maid. The latter, being a stranger in England was pleased to make Tochatti's acquaintance; and one day told her the story, of course in strictest confidence. Well, the woman, the solicitor's wife, died, almost immediately after that, as the result of a motor accident; and her maid returned to her home somewhere in the valley of the Loire, without having, so far as one can conjecture, passed on the tale to anyone else."
"Yes," said Anstice thoughtfully, as Chloe came to a stop. "Quite a simple explanation, as you say, yet one which might never have come to light."
"There is still a point puzzling me," said Carstairs meditatively. "I can understand Tochatti writing the letters, and thus seeking to injure a woman whom she considered to be the enemy of her mistress. But how did she ever bring herself to allow you to be suspected, Chloe?"
"Ah, that is where the mystery really comes in, and where, possibly, Dr. Anstice's theory of the double personality may be considered." Chloe looked at them both rather dubiously. "I confess I can't understand that part of the story myself. Tochatti has assured me that she never for an instant dreamed I should be suspected--the slight similarity in some of the writing to some of mine was more or less accidental, though she admits she had tried to model her script on mine because she admired it ... as she admired all my poor faculties," said Chloe, with a little shrug of her shoulders. "I really believe she used my pens and paper without any idea of the harm she was doing me--in fact, if such a supposition could be entertained for a moment, I don't believe she had any very clear idea what she was doing beyond a fixed intention to work harm to the woman she detested."