The Draycott Murder Mystery by Molly Thynne

Sybil Kean's amazing letter left Fayre in a condition of mingled bewilderment and relief. Out of all the tangle of events that he had been trying in vain to unravel one strand at least had inexplicably straightened itself. Lady Kean was not only already in possession of the information he had stumbled on so unexpectedly, information which he had hoped against hope might possibly be kept from her, but she had deliberately withheld it from her husband. That the truth was contained in the letter which she had asked him only to open in the event of her death he had no doubt, and that she was relying on him to break the news as mercifully as possible to Kean was equally evident. Little difference it would make to Edward, Fayre reflected grimly, once he had lost the one being in whom his whole life was centred.

His last action that night was to switch on the light over his bed and read her letter again for the tenth time, amazed at the strength and devotion of the woman he had thought he knew so well, but whom he had after all understood so little. He realized how greatly he had underestimated her affection for Kean and how misled he had been in concluding that her heart was irretrievably buried in her first husband's grave, and he wondered by what feminine logic she had managed to reconcile her conscience with the deception she had practised on Kean. The one thing that puzzled him in her letter was her stipulation that he should not read the enclosure in the event of Leslie's acquittal. Try as he would, he could see no connection between the trial and the information he believed the enclosure to contain. One thing was obvious: at the earliest opportunity he must see Sybil Kean and tell her that he had surprised her secret. That she was, literally, worrying herself into the grave he had no doubt.