Throughout this long conversation, Tom Sampson showed himself as shrewd as he was devoted. He seized the salient points of the case; fully measured all its difficulties; saw that sooner or later John Treverton might be arrested on suspicion of his wife’s murder, and would have to prove himself innocent. Sampson, as well as Treverton, had seen how much malice there was in Edward Clare’s mind, and both foresaw the probability of that malice being pushed still further. ‘If we could only prove that your first marriage was invalid, we should get rid at once of any motive on your part for the murder,’ said Sampson. ‘You could not prove that I knew my first marriage to be invalid,’ answered Treverton, ‘unless you are going to try to prove a lie.’ ‘I don’t know what I might not try to do, if your neck were in danger,’ retorted Sampson. ‘I shouldn’t stick at trifles, you may depend upon it. The grand thing will be to find out if there was a previous marriage. After your story about the sailor at the Morgue, I am inclined to hope for success.’ ‘Are you? Poor Sampson! I strongly suspect we are going in search of a mare’s nest.’ They left St. Malo next morning, and arrived at Auray early in the afternoon. They were jolted down a long boulevard from the station to the town in an omnibus, which finally deposited them at the Pavillon d’en haut, a very comfortable hotel, where they were received by a smiling landlady, and a pretty chambermaid in a neat black gown, trimmed with velvet, a cambric cap as quaint as a nun’s headgear, and apron, collar, and cuffs of the same spotless fabric. As Tom Sampson’s knowledge of the French language was that of the average British schoolboy, he naturally found himself unable to understand the natives of an obscure port in Brittany. He was with his client in the capacity of adviser; but it behoved his client to do all the work. ‘Well, my dear fellow,’ said Treverton, when they had deposited their travelling bags at the hotel, and were standing in the empty market-place, looking round them somewhat vaguely, ‘here we are, and what is to be our first move now we are here?’ ‘I should think about the best plan would be to go to the churches and examine the registers,’ suggested Sampson. ‘I suppose you know your first wife’s real name?’ ‘Not unless it was Chicot--I married her under that name.’ ‘Chicot,’ repeated Sampson dubiously. ‘It sounds rather barbarous, but it’s nothing to the names over the shops here. I never saw such crack-jaw cognomens. Well, we’d better go and look up all the registers for the name of Chicot.’ ‘That would be slow work,’ said Treverton, thinking of the sweet young wife at home, full of fear and trouble, left to brood upon her sorrows at that very time when life ought to have been made bright and happy for her, a time when her mind might be most prone to despondency.