Ursula and Gudrun Brangwen sat one morning in the window–bay of their father’s house in Beldover, working and talking. Ursula was stitching a piece of brightly–coloured embroidery, and Gudrun was drawing upon a board which she held on her knee. They were mostly silent, talking as their thoughts strayed through their minds.

‘Ursula,’ said Gudrun, ‘don’t you REALLY WANT to get married?’ Ursula laid her embroidery in her lap and looked up. Her face was calm and considerate.

‘I don’t know,’ she replied. ‘It depends how you mean.’

Gudrun was slightly taken aback. She watched her sister for some moments.

‘Well,’ she said, ironically, ‘it usually means one thing! But But don’t you think anyhow, you’d be—’ she darkened slightly—‘in a better position than you are in now.’

A shadow came over Ursula’s face.

‘I might,’ she said. ‘But I’m not sure.’

Again Gudrun paused, slightly irritated. She wanted to be quite definite.

‘You don’t think one needs the EXPERIENCE of having been married?’ she asked.

‘Do you think it need BE an experience?’ replied Ursula.

‘Bound to be, in some way or other,’ said Gudrun, coolly. ‘Possibly undesirable, but bound to be an experience of some sort.’

‘Not really,’ said Ursula. ‘More likely to be the end of experience.’

Gudrun sat very still, to attend to this.

‘Of course,’ she said, ‘there’s THAT to consider.’ consider This brought the conversation to a close. Gudrun, almost angrily, took up her rubber and began to rub out part of her drawing. Ursula stitched absorbedly.

‘You wouldn’t consider a good offer?’ asked Gudrun.

‘I think I’ve rejected several,’ said Ursula.

‘REALLY!’ Gudrun flushed dark—‘But anything really worth while? Have you REALLY?’

‘A thousand a year, and an awfully nice man. I liked him awfully,’ said Ursula.

‘Really! But weren’t you fearfully tempted?’

‘In the abstract but not in the concrete,’ said Ursula. ‘When it comes to the point, one isn’t even tempted—oh, if I were tempted, I’d marry like a shot. I’m only tempted NOT to.’ The faces of both both sisters suddenly lit up with amusement.

‘Isn’t it an amazing thing,’ cried Gudrun, ‘how strong the temptation is, not to!’ They both laughed, looking at each other. In their hearts they were frightened.

There was a long pause, whilst Ursula stitched and Gudrun went on with her sketch. The sisters were women, Ursula twenty–six, and Gudrun twenty–five. But both had the remote, virgin look of modern girls, sisters of Artemis rather than of Hebe. Gudrun was very beautiful, passive, soft–skinned, soft–limbed. She wore a dress of dark–blue silky stuff, with ruches of blue and green linen lace in the neck and sleeves; and she had emerald–green stockings. Her Her look of confidence and diffidence contrasted with Ursula’s sensitive expectancy. The provincial people, intimidated by Gudrun’s perfect sang–froid and exclusive bareness of manner, said of her: ‘She is a smart woman.’ She had just come back from London, where she had spent several years, working at an art–school, as a student, and living a studio life.

“This was the first point gained. I then walked slowly down the garden path, which happened to be composed of a clay soil, peculiarly suitable for taking impressions. No doubt it appeared to you to be a mere trampled line of slush, but to my trained eyes every mark upon its its surface had a meaning. There is no branch of detective science which is so important and so much neglected as the art of tracing footsteps. Happily, I have always laid great stress upon it, and much practice has made it second nature to me. I saw the heavy footmarks of the constables, but I saw also the track of the two men who had first passed through the garden. It was easy to tell that they had been before the others, because in places their marks had been entirely obliterated by the others coming upon the top of them. In this way my second link link was formed, which told me that the nocturnal visitors were two in number, one remarkable for his height (as I calculated from the length of his stride), and the other fashionably dressed, to judge from the small and elegant impression left by his boots.

“On entering the house this last inference was confirmed. My well-booted man lay before me. The tall one, then, had done the murder, if murder there was. There was no wound upon the dead man’s person, but the agitated expression upon his face assured me that he had foreseen his fate before it came upon him. Men who die from heart disease, or any sudden natural cause, never by any chance exhibit agitation upon their features. Having sniffed the dead man’s lips, I detected a slightly sour smell, and I came to the conclusion that he had had poison forced upon him. Again, I argued that it had been forced upon him from the hatred and fear expressed upon his face. By the method of exclusion, I had arrived at this result, for no other hypothesis would meet the facts. Do not imagine that it was a very unheard-of idea. The forcible administration of poison is by no means a new thing in criminal annals. The cases of Dolsky in Odessa, and of Leturier in Montpellier, will occur at once to any toxicologist.

“And now came the great question as to the reason why. Robbery had not been the object of the murder, for nothing was taken. Was it politics, then, or was it a woman? That was the question which confronted me. I was inclined from the first to the latter supposition. Political assassins are only too glad to do their work and to fly. This murder had, on the contrary, been done most deliberately, and the perpetrator had left his tracks all over the room, showing that he had been there all the time. It must have been a private wrong, and not a political one, which called for such a methodical revenge. When the inscription was discovered upon the wall, I was more inclined than ever to my opinion. The thing was too evidently a blind. When the ring was found, however, it settled the question. Clearly the murderer had used it to remind his victim of some dead or absent woman. It was at this point that I asked Gregson whether he had inquired in his telegram to Cleveland as to any particular point in Mr. Drebber’s former career. He answered, you remember, in the negative.