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wanted to know.
    â€œWas Madge carrying anything, Gershaw?”
    â€œDon’t think so—oh yes, a book, loosely wrapped in newspaper. The rain had softened the paper and I offered her a satchel. But she found she could get it into the pocket of her mack—I remember pulling the flap over it for her.”
    So she would have had time to go to Dalehurst and get away, with a margin of minutes, before Dr. Delmore came on the scene. Penfold felt a profound unease and wished he had not tackled Gershaw. After all, there was no proof that she had gone to Dalehurst. The book was not necessarily the Wilcox book. And she might have gone to someone else with another message from the vicar. He decided to let the whole matter drop and found that he could not. The riddle travelled home with him every evening and even intruded on the outward journey, so that his attention would wander from the morning paper.
    As he could not shake it off, he tried to stare it out of countenance. Let it be granted that Madge did go to Dalehurst and did know that her aunt was dead before Dr. Delmore stopped her in the road and told her. What did it matter? Was it to be supposed that she went through the open french window and, in a very few minutes—never mind the shock!—saw something, not seen by the highly trained detectives, which told her that he had killed Aunt Agnes? Utterly absurd! Therefore he would put it out of mind.
    He did put it out of mind for the better part of a fortnight’s holiday in August, which they spent at Brighton. On the last day, the riddle raised its head and he promptly struck at it with a new argument. Would a woman of Madge’s character—would anyone but a degraded gun-moll—live with a man whom she believed to have killed a woman who was virtually her mother? She would not! Therefore Madge had no secret weapon and he could be master in his own house.
    The obsession was beginning to exist in its own right, as something separate from his desire to change Madge back into a docile and obedient wife. It had an integrity of its own, with no fear outside itself. He did not believe that, if she had proof, she would take it to the police. The terror lay in an imagined moment, in which she would say: ‘I know you killed Aunt Agnes.’ Being an imaginative terror, it was more consuming than a reasonable fear.
    If she had known before Dr. Delmore had told her, why had she not raised the alarm herself? He could find a dozen contradictory answers. Sometimes in his sleep, and sometimes in a waking dream in the train coming home, he would play the part of Madge entering the room by the french window. ‘Auntie, I’ve brought you The Best of Wilcox .’ No, because she would have seen at once that her aunt was dead. In the shock of the discovery she would have forgotten all about the book, which was in the pocket of her mackintosh.
    She would have brought the book home.
    That night, when Madge had gone to bed, he began his search. In the house there were about a thousand books, some eight hundred of which had been bought by his parents. There were four sectional bookcases—an innovation of Madge’s—dotted about the drawing-room. In the section devoted to poetry and novels there was no Wilcox anthology. It was not on the shelves in the morning-room. It had not fallen behind anything. He thought of Madge’s mackintosh, which she very rarely wore, found it in the cupboard under the stairs, with the pockets empty.
    He had to wait three days before he could be certain that Madge had an afternoon engagement. The strain of waiting preyed on his nerves. Then he came home by the earlier train and made a thorough search upstairs. Finally he was reduced to telling Madge that he had mislaid a technical book urgently needed and, with her able guidance, searched the whole house, without result.
    Given that the book was not in his house, where was it? In a week, he was again reconstructing