"Had they both been playing and singing all that evening?"
"Yes, they hadn't ceased for a moment, and I found it prevented the Demon from coming out, as I couldn't help counting in time with the music. It was all right when it was one, two, three, but common time muddled it dreadfully, though now I come to think of it, Julia was not actually in the room when we heard the bad news. She'd gone upstairs to look for a song or something. Of course there's no legal proof that Juliet really is his child," Lady Ruth continued; "she admits that he was rather vague about it, fancied a resemblance, in fact. Not that I or anyone else had any notion he had been married as a young man, but that's a thing he would be likely to be right about. I must say Mark has behaved extremely well about it, even quixotically. He wanted her to take his inheritance, and when she refused--and of course she couldn't decently do otherwise-- I'm blessed if he didn't ask her to marry him."
Gimblet looked up with more interest than he had yet shown.
"Do you mean to say he proposed that, merely as a way out of the difficulty?"
"Well, more or less. I don't say he isn't attracted by the pretty face of her, as much as his cousin was; privately I think he is, but I don't really know. Anyhow, it certainly would be a very good solution; but it was tactless of him to suggest it with David at the foot of the gallows, poor boy."
"She didn't tell me that," murmured Gimblet.
At that moment Juliet came into the room, and they talked of other things.
"I hear the post is gone," Gimblet said presently.
"I particularly wanted to catch it. I suppose there is no means of posting a letter now?"
The last train had gone south by that time, however, so there was nothing to be done till the next day.
He retired again to his room and gave himself up to his correspondence.
First a long letter to Macross in Glasgow, begging for the loan of prints of the photographs taken by the police during their visit, together with any details they might see fit to impart as to their observations and conclusions. "I have arrived so late on the scene that you have left me nothing to do," he wrote deceitfully. "But for the interest of the case I should like to have a look at the photographs."