Free Bones in the Barrow by Josephine Bell

cheek.
    â€œBecause I don’t know her address. She never went to Scotland. She left a message, a short note to me, saying she was going to this old school friend of hers. To cover her tracks for a few days, I suppose. Then she wrote to say it was not true. She had left me for good—with a man called Peter.”
    â€œPeter. Peter what?”
    â€œI don’t know.”
    â€œYou don’t—”
    â€œIt is probably too late to convince you, Inspector. But that is the truth. I do not know this fellow. I doubt if I have ever seen him. Now do you understand my position?”
    There was a long silence. Chief-Inspector Johnson felt a strong sense of outrage. It was bad enough to have the chap lying and evading questions and keeping his shifty eyes turned always towards the garden. But to suggest—
    â€œDo you mean to say you don’t know who the man is?”
    â€œI mean more than that. I don’t even know if he truly exists.”
    â€œAre you suggesting your wife is not normal?”
    A little smile appeared on Mr. Hilton’s thin lips.
    â€œNow I wonder what exactly you mean by that, Inspector? No, don’t try to tell me. I can guess. You simply mean, Is my wife going off her head, up the pole, or round the bend, as they say now-a-days? I don’t go so far as that. But Felicity is incurably romantic: she always was. She still has quite childish illusions about people, particularly men. She is easily flattered. If anyone showed her a reasonable amount of admiration she would conclude that it meant the arrival of a grand passion.”
    â€œWhich of your friends or acquaintances do you suspect of showing her this admiration?”
    â€œNone.”
    The inspector pursed up his mouth again.
    â€œCome now, sir. You admit she has gone off with another man. It wouldn’t be natural in any husband not to find out who the blighter is.”
    â€œThen I’m afraid I have behaved very unnaturally.”
    â€œHaven’t you moved a finger, sir?”
    â€œOh, yes. Several. I wrote her a letter. She asked me to. And I addressed it, as Janet Lapthorn addressed hers, to Charing Cross Post Office. Perhaps I ought to explain that in her letter to me, saying she had gone away with—this Peter—she asked me to let her divorce me. My letter was in answer to that.”
    â€œWhat did you say, if you don’t mind my asking?”
    â€œI don’t mind at all. I said nothing would persuade me, either to supply her with evidence for a divorce, or to divorce her. I advised her to come home, and reminded her that I was a very patient man. I also reminded her that she had been obliged to come home before, and suggested she might as well not put it off for so long this time.”
    Chief-Inspector Johnson whistled softly.
    â€œSo it’s not the first time.”
    â€œNot by any manner of means. It is the third.”
    â€œI see. On the other two occasions was the man unknown to you?”
    â€œNo. The first was very short and badly bungled. A long week end, and I happened to run into the chap’s wife in the market town where we lived at the time. She and her husband had a house in the country outside it. She was supposed to be in Devon with him and my wife. We sent telegrams—brief and to the point—and they came home the same day. I moved to London at the end of the month. The other affair was four years ago in Ealing, where we had a flat. She was away three months. She came back when I discovered that the chap had a wife in America. He was a business friend, an Englishman who travelled the U.S.A. He settled over there afterwards. As far as I know.”
    â€œYou have considered, I suppose, whether either of these men could have turned up again?”
    â€œNeither of them was called Peter.”
    â€œThat need not matter. Your wife would want to conceal his identity.”
    Alastair Hilton did not make any answer to that. Johnson, a dogged