"That is cruel," I answered. "She may be unpopular, but that's no reason why she should be a murderess. I suppose they base their suspicions upon the quarrel of which you told me yesterday." "I suppose so. The first Mrs Chetwode was a born lady, but of this woman nobody ever knew anything of who or what she was before he was so misguided as to marry her." "Perhaps the police inquiries will throw some light upon that," I remarked. "Let's hope so," he responded. And then, having finished my breakfast, we went together to the park. Fortunately, on the previous night, I had been able to slip out and in unobserved, for the landlord had been absent with his wife at a neighbour's, and was therefore not aware of a fact which might prove damning against me--namely, that I had disguised myself in a suit of second-hand clothes. The tragedy had been enacted at the bridge I had crossed. I had passed over that very spot, and had actually heard the sound of the assassin's cough. Was that a signal to an accomplice? It seemed very much as though there had been two persons lying in wait for the Colonel, and I, having passed at the moment when they expected him, had narrowly escaped being struck down. That cough was possibly the signal that had saved me. "Pass along, please! Pass along!" said a constable, as I stood staring in wonder at the spot where the body had been found half in the water among the waving reeds. We receded for some distance, while the publican pointed out the geographical position of the spot with its relation to the house and the high-road. "It's a lonely place 'ere of a night," he said. "Just the place where a man might commit a murder. Funny, however, that the Colonel was wandering about in the park alone!" "Curious, too, that his presence was not missed by his wife, or any of the household." "Yes," he said. "Very mysterious, indeed. He must have gone out unknown to any one, and, when the place was locked up for the night, it was believed he was indoors." "He was wearing evening dress," I said. "Oh, I believe so. But I'm not certain. I've not heard how he was dressed--I say, Harding," he cried, turning to a bent old man who chanced to be passing, "how was the Colonel dressed when he was found?" "In his cut-away coat and shirt," was the reply. "They said that his shirt-stud was stolen." "Ah!" exclaimed my garrulous friend, the publican, "that looks as though it was done with a motive of robbery--don't it?" "Yes," I said, my thoughts reverting again, as they constantly did, to that strange conversation which I had overheard in the darkness, the words of a man who had practically acknowledged himself to be an assassin. When we again emerged upon the high-road I parted from my companion, he returning to Hounslow and I continuing my walk along the highway leading to Twickenham.