"
"There, you see," said Egbert, "he nearly killed the gardener's boy."
"My dear Egbert, between nearly killing a gardener's boy and altogether
killing a Canon there is a wide difference. No doubt you have often felt
a temporary desire to kill a gardener's boy; you have never given way to
it, and I respect you for your self-control. But I don't suppose you
have ever wanted to kill an octogenarian Canon. Besides, as far as we
know, there had never been any quarrel or disagreement between the two
men. The evidence at the inquest brought that out very clearly."
"Ah!" said Egbert, with the air of a man coming at last into a deferred
inheritance of conversational importance, "that is precisely what I want
to speak to you about."
He pushed away his coffee cup and drew a pocket-book from his inner
breast-pocket. From the depths of the pocket-book he produced an
envelope, and from the envelope he extracted a letter, closely written in
a small, neat handwriting.
"One of the Canon's numerous letters to Aunt Adelaide," he explained,
"written a few days before his death. Her memory was already failing
when she received it, and I daresay she forgot the contents as soon as
she had read it; otherwise, in the light of what subsequently happened,
we should have heard something of this letter before now. If it had been
produced at the inquest I fancy it would have made some difference in the
course of affairs. The evidence, as you remarked just now, choked off
suspicion against Sebastien by disclosing an utter absence of anything
that could be considered a motive or provocation for the crime, if crime
there was.
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