Mrs. Lyons had resumed her seat. Her hands were grasping thearms of her chair, and I saw that the pink nails had turned whitewith the pressure of her grip.
“His wife!” she said again. “His wife! He is not a married man.”
Sherlock Holmes shrugged his shoulders.
“Prove it to me! Prove it to me! And if you can do so—!” Thefierce flash of her eyes said more than any words.
“I have come prepared to do so,” said Holmes, drawing severalpapers from his pocket. “Here is a photograph of the couple takenin York four years ago. It is indorsed ‘Mr. and Mrs. Vandeleur,’
but you will have no difficulty in recognizing him, and her also,if you know her by sight. Here are three written descriptions bytrustworthy witnesses of Mr. and Mrs. Vandeleur, who at thattime kept St. Oliver’s private school. Read them and see if you candoubt the identity of these people.”
She glanced at them, and then looked up at us with the set, rigidface of a desperate woman.
“Mr. Holmes,” she said, “this man had offered me marriage oncondition that I could get a divorce from my husband. He haslied to me, the villain, in every conceivable way. Not one wordof truth has he ever told me. And why—why? I imagined that allwas for my own sake. But now I see that I was never anything buta tool in his hands. Why should I preserve faith with him whonever kept any with me? Why should I try to shield him from theconsequences of his own wicked acts? Ask me what you like, andthere is nothing which I shall hold back. One thing I swear to you,and that is that when I wrote the letter I never dreamed of anyharm to the old gentleman, who had been my kindest friend.”
“I entirely believe you, madam,” said Sherlock Holmes. “Therecital of these events must be very painful to you, and perhaps itwill make it easier if I tell you what occurred, and you can checkme if I make any material mistake. The sending of this letter wassuggested to you by Stapleton?”
“He dictated it.”
“I presume that the reason he gave was that you would receivehelp from Sir Charles for the legal expenses connected with yourdivorce?”
“Exactly.”
“And then after you had sent the letter he dissuaded you fromkeeping the appointment?”
“He told me that it would hurt his self-respect that any otherman should find the money for such an object, and that thoughhe was a poor man himself he would devote his last penny toremoving the obstacles which divided us.”
“He appears to be a very consistent character. And then you heardnothing until you read the reports of the death in the paper?”
“No.”
“And he made you swear to say nothing about your appointmentwith Sir Charles?”
“He did. He said that the death was a very mysterious one, andthat I should certainly be suspected if the facts came out. Hefrightened me into remaining silent.”
“Quite so. But you had your suspicions?”
She hesitated and looked down.
“I knew him,” she said. “But if he had kept faith with me Ishould always have done so with him.”
“I think that on the whole you have had a fortunate escape,”
said Sherlock Holmes. “You have had him in your power and heknew it, and yet you are alive. You have been walking for somemonths very near to the edge of a precipice. We must wish yougood-morning now, Mrs. Lyons, and it is probable that you willvery shortly hear from us again.”
“Our case becomes rounded off, and difficulty after difficultythins away in front of us,” said Holmes as we stood waiting for thearrival of the express from town. “I shall soon be in the positionof being able to put into a single connected narrative one of themost singular and sensational crimes of modern times. Students ofcriminology will remember the analogous incidents in Godno, inLittle Russia, in the year ‘66, and of course there are the Andersonmurders in North Carolina, but this case possesses some featureswhich are entirely its own. Even now we have no clear case againstthis very wily man. But I shall be very much surprised if it is notclear enough before we go to bed this night.”
The London express came roaring into the station, and a small,wiry bulldog of a man had sprung from a first-class carriage. Weall three shook hands, and I saw at once from the reverential wayin which Lestrade gazed at my companion that he had learned agood deal since the days when they had first worked together. Icould well remember the scorn which the theories of the reasonerused then to excite in the practical man.
“Anything good?” he asked.
“The biggest thing for years,” said Holmes. “We have two hoursbefore we need think of starting. I think we might employ it ingetting some dinner and then, Lestrade, we will take the Londonfog out of your throat by giving you a breath of the pure night airof Dartmoor. Never been there? Ah, well, I don’t suppose you willforget your first visit.”