The Crooked Man — Shelley Smith

The life and crimes of Thomas Bates are fated to spiral with a horrid inevitability from petty thievery to murder. There's Grace Pickering, whose life he saves and who rewards him with a passionate affection he attempts to avoid - until he learns about her savings account, marrying her only to plunder it and leave her. His next victim, a man, he is forced to kill. Eventually he returns to Grace when she inherits wealth, and thereafter, her days seem numbered...but how long can Bates's depredations continue unchecked?