Audrey handed over a dingy¹ envelope, bearing the London postmark, and addressed to her at the Camden Hill house. Out of this Shawe took an equally dingy piece of paper--a single sheet of very cheap stationery². On it a few lines in vile³ caligraphy were scrawled⁴. He read them at once, while Audrey sat down on a near chair and watched him silently.  
 
"Dear Miss"--ran the anonymous⁵ letter,--"This is to warn you from invistigiting your poor ma's deth, as I know you are doing. Keip off the gras and don't be silly, or you will sueffer the gratest grief of your life. This is from one who sines as you see--A Frend."
 
 
"What do you think of it?" asked the girl, when her lover silently replaced the paper in its envelope and sat down beside her.
 
"I think there may be something in it," said Shawe, slowly. "I wonder--"
 
"You wonder what?"
 
"If it would not be as well to take the advice of this," and he tapped the envelope as he handed it back to her.
 
"No!" cried Audrey, her worn face flushing.
 
"A thousand times no. I shall learn the truth at all costs."
 
"But if it leads to more sorrow, dear?"
 
"I don't care what it leads to. To know the worst--whatever the worst may be--is better than this terrible suspense⁶." She looked at the dingy communication dubiously⁷. "I wonder who wrote this?"
 
"An uneducated person, apparently⁸."
 
"I don't believe it," declared the girl, quickly. "All that bad spelling and bad writing is intended to mislead."
 
Shawe shook his head. "How can you be sure of that?"
 
"I am sure of nothing. I am only assuming that such is the case. But, at all events, the person who wrote this letter knows that the matter of the death is being looked into."
 
"I don't see who can possibly know, save you and myself and Perry Toat."
 
"Who is Perry Toat?"
 
"The detective whom I am employing to search."
 
"What has he found out?"
 
"She, dear. Miss Toat's name is Peronella Toat, and she calls herself Perry on her card for business reasons. She has found out nothing very tangible⁹, and confines herself to theorising a lot." Ralph paused, and shook his head once more. "I fancy she is growing tired of the case." And he related Perry Toat's discoveries--such as they were--and also detailed¹⁰ her theories. When he ended Audrey was almost as despairing as he appeared to be.
 
"There doesn't seem to be a single ray of light," lamented¹¹ the girl, putting the envelope into her pocket. "Madame Coralie, her assistants, and her husband seem to be all innocent; unless," she added, with a quick look, "there is something in this idea of a prepared alibi¹²."
 
"Well, Miss Toat has learnt nothing likely to show that her surmise¹³ is right in that way, Audrey. Badoura apparently knows nothing, or, infatuated with Eddy¹⁴ Vail, refuses to say what she may know. As to Peri Banou, who is dumb, no information can be got from her, although she was in the shop when the crime was committed. She says that she was asleep on a divan¹⁵, and Zobeide certainly admits that she left her there when she went up to the still-room."
 
"Badoura, Peri Banou, Zobeide," said Miss Branwin, ticking off the quaint¹⁶ and musical names on her fingers. "You have mentioned only three of the assistants. What about the fourth?"
 
"Parizade? Oh! being blind, of course she can see nothing at all. She was behind the curtain in the still-room preparing some wash when Madame Coralie came to speak to her husband. That was about eight o'clock, just before Madame came down to tell you that your mother would remain for the night."
 
"It was about half-past eight that Madame came to the door."
 
"Oh! my dear girl, you must be mistaken. Madame herself and her husband both say it was five or ten minutes after eight o'clock when she came to you."
 
Audrey shook her head vehemently¹⁷. "Mrs. Mellop will tell you that we did not leave the house until a quarter past eight."
 
"The Pink Shop? That, of course, would make it right."
 
"No, our own house. There was a first piece at the theatre which Mrs. Mellop and I did not care about seeing. We only left in time to get to the theatre by nine, when the chief drama of the evening began. It was nearly half-past eight when we reached the Pink Shop, as it took us ten minutes, more or less, to get to Walpole Lane."
 
"There must be some mistake," said Shawe, rather puzzled by this clear and positive explanation. "Why, Badoura says that Eddy Vail drew her attention to the clock in the still-room, and then it was five minutes to eight. Almost immediately afterwards Madame came up from seeing your mother tucked in for the night, and very shortly went to the shop door to speak to you."
 
"Then the clock in the still-room must be wrong," said Audrey. "Tell Miss Toat what I say, and she may be able to learn if it is so."
 
"Well, and supposing you prove that the still-room clock is wrong?"
 
"Can't you see? In that case Madame Coralie could not have come up from seeing my mother safely to bed, for she must have come up to the still-room at about fifteen or twenty minutes past the hour. And the medical evidence says that my poor mother was murdered at eight o'clock."
 
"It does seem strange," said Shawe, reflectively. "Humph! I wonder if Perry Toat is right after all, and if this alibi--a very convincing one, I must say--is a faked affair. Audrey"--he turned earnestly towards the girl--"say nothing of this to anyone."
 
"Will you tell Miss Toat?"
 
"Yes, I shall certainly do that. But, after all, both you and the still-room clock may be right. It only means that Madame waited twenty minutes or so talking to her husband instead of coming down at once."
 
"But if she came at once--"
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