Caldew took the handkerchief in his hand. As Merrington remarked, the blood on it was hardly dry. It was a small linen square, destitute of feminine adornment except for a dainty "H R" worked in silk in one corner. The letters were barely visible in the blood with which the whole handkerchief was saturated. "I wonder how she got the blood on the handkerchief?" said Caldew. "Did she try to stop the bleeding after shooting Mrs. Heredith?" "It would be just like a woman to do so," grunted Merrington. "Women are fond of crying over spilt milk--especially when they have spilt it themselves. However, that's neither here nor there. The point is that this is the girl's handkerchief, and this is the revolver with which she shot Mrs. Heredith." "But what was her motive for committing such an atrocious crime?" asked Captain Stanhill in bewilderment. "Jealousy," responded Merrington promptly. "I saw the possibility of that motive as soon as I heard Milly Saker's story, and learnt that Hazel Rath had lived for some years in the moat-house. Young Heredith and she must have been thrown together a lot before the war, and there was doubtless a flirtation between them which probably developed into an intrigue. There are all the materials at hand for it--a well-born idle young man, a girl educated above her station, a lonely country-house, and plenty of opportunity. I know the type of girl well. These half-educated protegees of great ladies grow up with all the whims and caprices of fine females, and their silly little heads are easily turned. Probably this girl imagined that young Heredith was so captivated by her pretty face that he would marry her. When she learnt that she had been dropped for somebody else she brooded in secret until her unbalanced nature led her to commit this terrible crime. Moreover, she is the daughter of a woman with a queer past, who has been living under an assumed name for the past fifteen years." "Do you think mother and daughter have acted in collusion in this murder?" Caldew asked. "That is a question I would not care to answer offhand," responded Merrington thoughtfully. "Undoubtedly the mother shielded the daughter and lied to save her, and she obviously knew that the girl was absent from her room at the time the murder was committed. How far this implies guilty knowledge, or the acts of an accomplice, we are not yet in a position to say. We will arrest the daughter, and detain the mother--for the present, at all events. Whether we charge the mother as well as the daughter will depend on our subsequent investigations. It will be no novelty for the mother to be charged as accessory in a murder case," concluded Merrington, with a grim smile. "We have no direct evidence that the girl went upstairs last night," said Caldew, with a reflective air. "Milly Saker did not see her going upstairs, and apparently nobody saw her coming away."