nto a new train of thought. He had been well
aware ever since his coming to Hathelsborough of an atmosphere of
intrigue and mystery; every development that occurred seemed to thicken
it. Here again was more intrigue centring in a domestic imbroglio. There
was nothing much to be wondered at in it, he thought; Mallett was the
sort of man to attract a certain type of woman, and, from all Brent had
heard in the town, a man given to adventure; Mrs. Saumarez was clearly a
woman fond of men's society; Mrs. Mallett, on the other hand, was a
strait-laced, hard sort, given to social work and the furtherance of
movements in which her husband took no interest. The sequence of events
seemed probable to Brent. First there had been Wellesley; then
Wallingford; perhaps a cleverly-contrived double affair with both. But
during a recent period there had been this affair with Mallett--that,
from Wellesley's showing, had come to Wallingford's ears. Brent knew his
cousin sufficiently well to know that Wallingford would develop an ugly
frame of mind on finding that he had been deceived--all sorts of things
might well develop out of a sudden discovery. But had all this anything
to do with Wallingford's murder? That, after all, was, to him, the main
point. And so far he saw no obvious connection. He felt like a man who
is presented with a mass of tangled cord, from which protrude a dozen
loose ends--which end to seize upon that, on being drawn out, would not
reveal more knots and tangles he did not know, for the very life of him.
Perhaps, as Hawthwaite had remarked, it all helped, but as far as Brent
could see it was still difficult to lay hold of a continuous and
unbroken line.

It puzzled him, being still a stranger to the habits and customs of
these people, to see that life in Hathelsborough went on, amidst all
these alarums and excursions, very much as usual. He had already
cultivated a habit of frequenting places of public resort, such as the
smoking-room of his hotel, the big bar-room at Bull's, the rooms of the
Town Club, to which he had without difficulty been duly elected a member
on Tansley's nomination; at all these places he heard a great deal of
gossip, but found no surprise shown at its subjects. Within a day or
two, everybody who frequented these places knew that there had been a
domestic upheaval at Mallett's and had at least some idea of the true
reason of it. But nobody showed any astonishment; everybody, indeed,
seemed to tak