hat John Perry accused his mother and brother of murdering a man, and
swore he had helped them to do it. He told a story full of elaborate
detail, and had an answer to everything, except the curious fact that
the body couldn't be found; but the judge, who was probably drunk at the
time--this was in Restoration days--made nothing of that. The mother and
brother denied the accusation. All three prisoners were found guilty and
hanged, purely on John's evidence. Two years after, the man whom they
were hanged for murdering came back to Campden. He had been kidnapped by
pirates and taken to sea. His disappearance had given John his idea. The
point about John is, that his including himself in the accusation,
which amounted to suicide, was the thing in his evidence which convinced
everybody of its truth. It was so obvious that no man would do himself
to death to get somebody else hanged. Now that is exactly the answer
which the prosecution would have made if Marlowe had told the truth. Not
one juryman in a million would have believed in the Manderson plot.'

Mr Cupples mused upon this a few moments. 'I have not your acquaintance
with that branch of history,' he said at length; 'in fact, I have none
at all. But certain recollections of my own childhood return to me in
connection with this affair. We know from the things Mabel told you what
may be termed the spiritual truth underlying this matter; the insane
depth of jealous hatred which Manderson concealed. We can understand
that he was capable of such a scheme. But as a rule it is in the task
of penetrating to the spiritual truth that the administration of justice
breaks down. Sometimes that truth is deliberately concealed, as in
Manderson's case. Sometimes, I think, it is concealed because simple
people are actually unable to express it, and nobody else divines it.
When I was a lad in Edinburgh the whole country went mad about the
Sandyford Place murder.'

Trent nodded. 'Mrs M'Lachlan's case. She was innocent right enough.'

'My parents thought so,' said Mr Cupples. 'I thought so myself when I
became old enough to read and understand that excessively sordid story.
But the mystery of the affair was so dark, and the task of getting
at the truth behind the lies told by everybody concerned proved so
hopeless, that others were just as fully convinced of the innocence of
old James Fleming. All Scotland took sides on the question. It was the
subject of debates in Parliament. The pre