Chapter IV

“But,” I said at last, for indeed I was deeply mystified, “what does common sense argue?—the case seems to be absolutely hopeless.”

He surveyed his beloved bit of string for a moment, and his mild blue eyes blinked at me over his bone-rimmed spectacles.

“Common sense,” he said at last, with his most apologetic manner, “tells me that Ayrsham village is a remote little place, where a daily paper is unknown, and where no one reads the fashionable intelligence or knows anything about Birthday honours.”

“What _do_ you mean?” I gasped in amazement.

“Simply this, that no one at Ayrsham village, certainly not Mary Newton herself, had realised that one of the Mr. Ledburys, whom all had known at ‘The Limes’ four years ago, had since become Lord Walterton.”

“Lord Walterton!” I ejaculated, wholly incredulously.

“Why, yes!” he replied quietly. “Do you mean to say you never thought of that? that it never occurred to you that Mary Newton may have admitted to her father that Mr. Ledbury had been the man who had so wickedly wronged her, but that she, in her remote little village, had also no idea that the Mr. Ledbury she meant was recently made, and is now styled, Lord Walterton?

“Old Man Newton, who knew of the gossip which had coupled his daughter’s name, years ago, with the younger Mr. Ledbury, naturally took it for granted that she was referring to him. Moreover, we may take it from the girl’s subsequent attitude that she did all she could to shield the man whom she had once loved; women, you know, have that sort of little way with them.

“Old Newton, fully convinced that young Ledbury was the man he wanted, went up to The Towers and had the stormy interview, which no doubt greatly puzzled the young Hussar. He undoubtedly spoke of it to his brother, Lord Walterton, who, newly married and of high social position, would necessarily dread a scandal as much as anybody.

“Lord Walterton went up to town with his young wife the following morning. Ayrsham is only forty minutes from London. He came down in the evening, met Mary in the lane, asked to see her father, and killed him in a moment of passion, when he found that the old man’s demands were preposterously unreasonable. Moreover, Englishmen in all grades of society have an innate horror of being bullied or blackmailed; the murder probably was not premeditated, but the outcome of rage at being browbeaten by the old man.

“You see, the police did not use their common sense over so simple a matter. They naturally made no enquiries as to Lord Walterton’s movements, who seemingly had absolutely nothing to do with the case. If they had, I feel convinced that they would have found that his lordship would have had some difficulty in satisfying everybody as to his whereabouts on that particular Tuesday night.

“Think of it, it is so simple—the only possible solution of that strange and unaccountable mystery.”

XI. The Affair at the Novelty Theatre