“Captain Sessle was as good as his word. He reappeared within a minute or two, much to Hollaby’s satisfaction, as two other players were coming up behind them, and the light was failing rapidly. They drove off, and at once Hollaby noticed that something had occurred to upset his companion. Not only did he foozle his drive badly, but his face was worried, and his forehead creased in a big frown. He hardly answered his companion’s remarks, and his golf was atrocious. Evidently something had occurred to put him completely off his game.
“They played that hole and the eighth, and then Captain Sessle declared abruptly that the light was too bad and that he was off home. Just at that point there is another of those narrow ‘slips’ leading to the Windlesham road, and Captain Sessle departed that way which was a short cut to his home, a small bungalow on the road in question. The other two players came up, a Major Barnard and Mr. Lecky, and to them Hollaby mentioned Captain Sessle’s sudden change of manner. They also had seen him speaking to the woman in brown, but had not been near enough to see her face. All three men wondered what she could have said to upset their friend to that extent.
“They returned to the Club House together, and as far as was known at the time, were the last people to see Captain Sessle alive. The day was a Wednesday and on Wednesdays cheap tickets to London are issued. The man and wife who ran Captain Sessle’s small bungalow were up in town according to custom, and did not return until the late train. They entered the Bungalow as usual, and supposed their master to be in his room asleep. Mrs. Sessle, his wife, was away on a visit.
“The murder of the Captain was a nine days’ wonder. Nobody could suggest a motive for it. The identity of the tall woman in brown was eagerly discussed, but without result. The police were, as usual, blamed for their supineness-most unjustly as time was to show. For a week later, a girl called Doris Evans was arrested and charged with the murder of Captain Anthony Sessle.
“The police had had little to work upon. A strand of fair hair caught in the dead man’s fingers, and a few threads of flame colored wool caught on one of the buttons of his blue coat. Diligent inquiries at the Railway Station and elsewhere had elicited the following facts.
“A young girl dressed in a flame colored coat and skirt had arrived by Main that evening about seven o’clock, and had asked the way to Captain Sessle’s house. The same girl had reappeared again at the station, two hours later. Her hat was awry and her hair tousled, and she seemed in a state of great agitation. She inquired about the trains back to town, and was continually looking over her shoulder as though afraid of something.
“Our police force is in many ways very wonderful. With this slender evidence to go upon, they managed to track down the girl, and identify her as one Doris Evans. She was charged with murder, and cautioned that anything she might say would be used against her, but she nevertheless persisted in making a statement, and this statement she repeated again in detail, without any substantial variation, at the subsequent proceedings.
“Her story was this. She was a typist by profession, and had made friends one evening, in a Cinema, with a well dressed man who declared he had taken a fancy to her. His name, he told her, was Anthony, and he suggested that she should come down to his bungalow at Sunningdale. She had no idea then, or at any other time, that he had a wife. It was arranged between them that she should come down on the following Wednesday-the day, you will remember, when the servants would be absent and his wife away from home. In the end he told her his full name was Anthony Sessle, and gave her the name of his house.
“She duly arrived at the Bungalow on the evening in question, and was greeted by Sessle who had just come in from She links. Though he professed himself delighted to see her, the girl declared that from the first his manner was strange and different. A half acknowledged fear sprang up in her, and she wished fervently that she had not come.