“I’m afraid Charles made very little out of it,” she said. “Mr. Mallett, you’ve simply no idea how hateful it is for me to be talking in this way about my husband, but it was such a very difficult position for both of us, wasn’t it? I am sure that you, in your profession, learn to look on these things in such a much more broad-minded way than other people would—Well, I promised Charles I’d do what I could for him, and I did try to help him in lots of ways, but there was so little I could do. I never had any money to speak of to give him. Pompey was very generous in a way, but he always wanted to know where the money had gone to, and it was really most difficult for me. And for Charles, too, of course. Poor fellow, what could he do?”

“He could have divorced you, of course, and got enormous damages from any jury,” said Mallett impatiently.

He looked at Mrs. Eales as he spoke, and something in her expression prompted him to add: “Or couldn’t he?”

“No, Mr. Mallett,” she answered in a voice that was hardly more than a whisper. “That is just what—he—could—not. Oh!” she went on in a sudden passionate outburst, “I do think our divorce laws are the most horribly unjust things that ever were invented! Simply made to make people unhappy and force them to break the law if they’re going to look respectable! As if a poor creature like that counted as being alive at all, after all these years in a madhouse! Why doesn’t someone do something about it, I want to know?”

Mallett heard this rigmarole out with an impassive countenance. When it was over, he said in his most matter-of-fact tone:

“Captain Eales couldn’t divorce you because he was married already?”

“Yes.”

“His first wife being in a lunatic asylum?”

“Yes.”

“So that your marriage to him was invalid and bigamous?”

“Yes—and now I suppose it’s all got to come out.” She was weeping now—or at all events, going through the motions of weeping with great virtuosity.

“Possibly,” said Mallett. “But I am investigating murder, not bigamy. Do you feel strong enough to answer any more questions?”

Mrs. Eales raised her head from the cushions in which she had hidden it and began to powder her nose with great vigour.

“Yes. Please go on,” she said. “I’m sorry to have been so silly, but you do understand how very, very hard things have been for me, don’t you, Mr. Mallett?”

“Quite,” said the inspector, feeling as he did so that it was a singularly inadequate answer. “Now,” he went on, “I must ask you this: when did you first know that your husband was already married?”

“Not when I married him,” she answered quickly. “I swear that!”

“When, then?”