churchyard, of which the high-banked wall bounded the top of the broad village street. Also, this man whose name he now knew to be Kentworthy had passed him more than once on the narrow field path along which he had walked so joyously this morning.

“I have only just read your note, Mr. Kentworthy, for I was late this morning. What can I do for you? I’m afraid 58I cannot spare you much time, for, as you see, I haven’t even opened my letters.”

58

His burly, substantial-looking visitor came forward and stood close to him.

“I may take it that you’ve no idea of the business which has brought me here, Mr. Garlett?”

He looked straight into the face of the man he was addressing, and Harry Garlett felt just a little disconcerted by that steady, steely stare.

“No,” he said frankly, “I have no idea at all of your business, but I have lately seen you walking about Terriford village, so I take it that you have some association with this part of the world?”

“This is my first visit to Grendon,” said the other slowly, “and I was sent here, Mr. Garlett, on a most unpleasant errand.”

Again he looked searchingly at Garlett, and then he went on, speaking in a deliberate, matter-of-fact voice:

“I am a police inspector attached to the Criminal Investigation Department, and I was sent down here, about a week ago, to make inquiries concerning the death of Mrs. Emily Garlett, your late wife.”

Harry Garlett got up from his chair; he was so bewildered, so amazed, and yes, so dismayed, at what the other had just said, that he wondered whether he could have heard those strange, disturbing words aright.

“Concerning the death of my wife?” he repeated. “I don’t understand exactly what you mean by that——?”

James Kentworthy did not take his eyes off the other’s face. Long and successful as had been his career in the Criminal Investigation Department, he had never had a case of which the opening moves interested and, in a sense, puzzled him so much as did this case. He asked himself whether the man now standing opposite to him, whose face had gone gray under its healthy tan, was an innocent man, or that most dangerous and vile of criminals, a secret poisoner?

“From some information recently laid 

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