None at all. I was inclined to think at one time that he knew who had
done it and was screening him or her, but I am convinced now that he is
as puzzled as everyone else. He is not a very quick-witted youth,
though comely to look at and, I should think, sound at heart.
I cannot admire his taste, I remarked, if it is indeed a fact that
he was averse to a marriage with so charming a young lady as this Miss
Turner.
Ah, thereby hangs a rather painful tale. This fellow is madly,
insanely, in love with her, but some two years ago, when he was only a
lad, and before he really knew her, for she had been away five years at
a boarding-school, what does the idiot do but get into the clutches of
a barmaid in Bristol and marry her at a registry office? No one knows a
word of the matter, but you can imagine how maddening it must be to him
to be upbraided for not doing what he would give his very eyes to do,
but what he knows to be absolutely impossible. It was sheer frenzy of
this sort which made him throw his hands up into the air when his
father, at their last interview, was goading him on to propose to Miss
Turner. On the other hand, he had no means of supporting himself, and
his father, who was by all accounts a very hard man, would have thrown
him over utterly had he known the truth. It was with his barmaid wife
that he had spent the last three days in Bristol, and his father did
not know where he was. Mark that point. It is of importance. Good has
come out of evil, however, for the barmaid, finding from the papers
that he is in serious trouble and likely to be hanged, has thrown him
over utterly and has written to him to say that she has a husband
already in the Bermuda Dockyard, so that there is really no tie between
them. I think that that bit of news has consoled young McCarthy for all
that he has suffered.
But if he is innocent, who has done it?
Ah! who? I would call your attention very particularly to two points.
One is that the murdered man had an appointment with someone at the
pool, and that the someone could not have been his son, for his son was
away, and he did not know when he would return. The second is that the
murdered man was heard to cry Cooee! before he knew that his son had
returned. Those are the crucial points upon which the case depends. And
now let us talk about George Meredith, if you please, and we shall
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