Page:Alice Stuyvesant - The Vanity Box.djvu/148

 So she went to the old, old vault in the old, old church where many generations of Herewards lay; but perhaps none of the name had ever taken with them into the grave such a secret as hers. A word from her would have freed two men, at least, out of three, of suspicion, and perhaps a woman. For Kate Craigie was under that ban as well as her lover now, thanks to her freedom of speech before Poppet. She could not have killed Lady Hereward, since she had been sitting with Mrs. Barnard when the shots in the woods were fired; but she might—so thought some people—have been expecting those shots, because she had encouraged Edward to pay a grudge of hers as well as his own.

Meanwhile, Scotland Yard was busy, in a quiet way. Nobody knew exactly what the police were about, or what clues had been found; but in spite of The Morning's correspondent, it soon began to be rumoured that the exhaustive search of the woods had, after all, resulted in disappointment. The bloodhounds had followed several trails, but they had been misleading ones, or at best had ended in mystery as impenetrable as the thick bracken in the forest. The revolver with which Lady Hereward had been shot was not forthcoming, though it was hunted for with skill and diligence; and no traces of the murderer were visible in the Tower, notwithstanding the fact that a clever detective had examined each of the four rooms,