His persistence was at length rewarded. He discovered what had been the cause of the quarrel between Winter and Prinsep. And it was Morgan who told him, quite unconscious that he was providing a link in the chain which Thomas was attempting to forge. Thomas had turned his attention to a further study of the character and circumstances of the murdered men, and had gone to Morgan for light on the ways of his late master. It was easy to see that Morgan had disliked Prinsep, though he had always behaved to him in life as a perfectly suave and well-drilled servant knows how to behave—with a deadly politeness that conceals all human feeling behind an impenetrable mask. But, now that Prinsep was dead, Morgan no longer concealed his opinion of him. He had neither prospect nor intention of remaining with the Brooklyns, and he did not care whether they liked or disliked what he said. Accordingly, he told Thomas without any hesitation that, shortly before his death, Prinsep had been engaged in a peculiarly unpleasant intrigue with a girl down at Sir Vernon’s country place at Fittleworth, in Sussex—the daughter, in fact, of Sir Vernon’s head gardener there—and what made it worse was that the girl was engaged to be married at the time to a decent fellow who had only found out at the last moment how things were going. He would marry her all the same; but that did not make Prinsep’s part in the affair less dishonourable. It did not take Thomas long to extract the information that the “decent fellow” whom Prinsep had wronged was actually no other than this very man, Winter, against whom he had been trying to build up a case. Winter was twenty years older than the girl; but he seemed to be very much in love with her, and naturally enraged by Prinsep’s misuse of her. Here at last were all the elements of a crime of passion, and Thomas began to see his way clear to throw upon Winter quite enough suspicion to make it very difficult for a jury to convict Walter Brooklyn. Indeed, might he not even have stumbled accidentally on the truth, or a part of it? Perhaps after all Walter Brooklyn was not the murderer, although he knew all about it. But, on the whole, he was still inclined to believe that his client was guilty, and that nevertheless fortune had presented him with an excellent chance of shifting the suspicion elsewhere. Certainly he would say not a word of his discoveries to any one until the time came to adopt an actual line of defence at the coming trial. Chapter XIX The Police Have Their Doubts