“You did that very well, Cassilis; I congratulate you. I think that young woman’s teeth have been drawn pretty effectually. It would never have done for her to be going about accusing the police of trying to hush up the case. She would have got some paper to take up her story, and there would have been the devil to pay.”
“Do you think there is any chance that she was mixed up in the business?” I asked with hesitation.
Evidently the specialist was displeased by the question.
“It is not my practice to speculate, as I think I have told you. I prefer to confine myself to reasoning on the evidence before me. At present the evidence points to this death being due to a certain drug, which must have been administered during the dance by some person who was present, and who had a motive for rendering Weathered insensible—the death may have been due to his or her ignorance of the power of the drug. We now have direct evidence, which may be true, that the drug was put into his coffee by the dancer disguised as Zenobia, and we have further evidence that that costume was supplied to Lady Violet Bredwardine about a year ago, and was regularly worn by her in the Domino Club.
“Add to that the appearance of her name in the list of suspects compiled from Weathered’s diary and the Club register, and the story we have just heard of her being pursued by Weathered and persecuted with attentions which she resented. It is a case on which very few juries would hesitate to convict.
“Against that we have nothing but an idle suspicion on the part of a waiter that the wearer of the Zenobia costume on this particular night was a man, and the police information that Lady Violet left London by a midday train. Of course she may have got out anywhere, and been back long before night.”
What was I to say? What ought I to do? Had the time come for me to make the confession I had held back even more for Violet Bredwardine’s sake than for my own? I shuddered at the thought that what I had to tell might not exonerate her—that it might deepen the suspicion against her, if it were believed. And suppose it should not be believed? What excuse could I make for having put it off so long? Would not Sir Frank Tarleton have every right to doubt me, and to think that my story was a false one invented at the eleventh hour to save the true culprit?
There was one slender plank to cling to. I was confident that Lady Violet’s alibi was genuine. If the question of her guilt or innocence could be made to depend on that, I had no fear of the result.
“In that case, sir, wouldn’t it be best for the police to go down to Herefordshire, and make sure whether she was there or not?”
To my surprise Tarleton raised the objection that had held me back before.