Page:Edgar Jepson--the four philanthropists.djvu/215

Rh She sat down in her easy chair, and looked about her.

"How's Mrs. Henrietta Jubb? Have the police found a clue?" I said, with some anxiety.

"No; and they're not trying to, or I shouldn't have come back. When Inspector Bramick saw the suicide's letter and the empty chloroform bottle, and examined the shrubbery and found no trace of a struggle, nor even a footprint, he was very doubtful. But when Mrs. Jubb declared that one of the masked men was the Vicar—it seems she hates the Vicar—he made up his mind that it was all an hallucination, that she had never been attacked at all. He told me all about it, for he was staying at the 'Rose and Crown,' and I talked to him a good deal. He said that she was as mad as a hatter, and tried to kill herself. Then when she didn't succeed, she trumped up the story of the masked men in case any one should have seen her when she was insensible, and read the letter."

"But how did he get over her leaving the letter in tie shrubbery?"

"He says that the chloroform made her stupid, and she forgot all about it."

A very reasonable supposition."

"Now every one in Hardstone says that she is mad, and oughtn't to be at large. They have ever so many instances of her being mad which they