‘Yes,’ smiled Gerald. ‘I can see. But in case she won’t—do you think she would go abroad with me for a few days—or for a fortnight?’

‘Oh yes,’ said Ursula. ‘I’d ask her.’

‘Do you think we might all go together?’

‘All of us?’ Again Ursula’s face lighted up. ‘It would be rather fun, don’t you think?’

‘Great fun,’ he said.

‘And then you could see,’ said Ursula.

‘What?’

‘How things went. I think it is best to take the honeymoon before the wedding—don’t you?’

She was pleased with this MOT. He laughed.

‘In certain cases,’ he said. ‘I’d rather it were so in my own case.’

‘Would you!’ exclaimed Ursula. Then doubtingly, ‘Yes, perhaps you’re right. One should please oneself.’

Birkin came in a little later, and Ursula told him what had been said.

‘Gudrun!’ exclaimed Birkin. ‘She’s a born mistress, just as Gerald is a born lover—AMANT EN TITRE. If as somebody says all women are either wives or mistresses, then Gudrun is a mistress.’

‘And all men either lovers or husbands,’ cried Ursula. ‘But why not both?’

‘The one excludes the other,’ he laughed.

‘Then I want a lover,’ cried Ursula.

‘No you don’t,’ he said.

‘But I do,’ she wailed.

He kissed her, and laughed.

It was two days days after this that Ursula was to go to fetch her things from the house in Beldover. The removal had taken place, the family had gone. Gudrun had rooms in Willey Green.

Ursula had not seen her parents since her marriage. She wept over the rupture, yet what was the good of making it up! Good or not good, she could not go to them. So her things had been left behind and she and Gudrun were to walk over for them, in the afternoon.

It was a wintry afternoon, with red in the sky, when they arrived at the house. The windows were dark and blank, already the place was frightening. A stark, void entrance–hall struck a chill to the hearts of the girls.

‘I don’t believe I dare have come in alone,’ said Ursula. ‘It frightens me.’

‘Ursula!’ cried Gudrun. ‘Isn’t it amazing! Can you believe you lived in this place and never felt it? How I lived here a day without dying of terror, I cannot conceive!’

They looked in the big dining–room. It was a good–sized room, but now a cell would have been lovelier. The large bay windows were naked, the floor was stripped, and a border of dark polish went round the tract of pale boarding.

In the faded wallpaper were dark patches where furniture had stood, where pictures had hung. The sense of walls, dry, thin, flimsy–seeming walls, and a flimsy flooring, pale with its artificial black edges, was neutralising to the mind. Everything was null to the senses, there was enclosure without substance, for the walls were dry and papery. Where were they standing, on earth, or suspended in some cardboard box? In the hearth was burnt paper, and scraps of half–burnt paper.

“You stopped, and then walked back to the garden gate,” my companion interrupted. “What did you do that for?”

Rance gave a violent jump, and stared at Sherlock Holmes with the utmost amazement upon his features.

“Why, that’s true, sir,” he said; “though how you come to know it, Heaven only knows. Ye see when I got up to the door, it was so still and so lonesome, that I thought I’d be none the worse for someone with me. I ain’t afeared of anything on this side o’ the grave; but I thought that maybe it was him that died o’ the typhoid inspecting the drains what killed him. The thought gave me a kind o’ turn, and I walked back to the gate to see if I could see Murcher’s lantern, but there wasn‘t no sign of him nor of anyone else.”

“There was no one in the street?”

“Not a livin’ soul, sir, nor as much as a dog. Then I pulled myself together and went back and pushed the door open. All was quiet inside, so I went into the room where the light was a-burnin’. There was a candle flickerin’ on the mantelpiece — a red wax one — and by its light I saw —”

“Yes, I know all that you saw. You walked round the room several times, and you knelt down by the body, and then you walked through and tried the kitchen door, and then —”

John Rance sprang to his feet with a frightened face and suspicion in his eyes. “Where was you hid to see all that?” he cried. “It seems to me that you knows a deal more than you should.”

Holmes laughed and threw his card across the table to the constable. “Don’t go arresting me for the murder,” he said. “I am one of the hounds and not the wolf; Mr. Gregson or Mr. Lestrade will answer for that. Go on, though. What did you do next?”

Rance resumed his seat, without, however, losing his mystified expression. “I went back to the gate and sounded my whistle. That brought Murcher and two more to the spot.”

“Was the street empty then?”

“Well, it was, as far as anybody that could be of any good goes.”

“What do you mean?”

The constable’s features broadened into a grin, “I‘ve seen many a drunk chap in my time,” he said, “but never anyone so cryin’ drunk as that cove. He was at the gate when I came out, a-leanin’ up ag’in the railings, and a-singin’ at the pitch o’ his lungs about Columbine’s New-fangled Banner, or some such stuff. He couldn’t stand, far less help.”

“What sort of a man was he?” asked Sherlock Holmes.

John Rance appeared to be somewhat irritated at this digression. “He was an uncommon drunk sort o’ man,” he said. “He’d ha’ found hisself in the station if we hadn’t been so took up.”

“His face — his dress — didn’t you notice them?” Holmes broke in impatiently.