“Yes, for drawing the only possible conclusions from a given set of facts. Well, I suppose we shall have to go back to the beginning again, and start to draw some impossible ones instead.”
“Oh, Lord!” Alec groaned.
“But seriously, Alec,” said Roger with a change of tone, “things are going very curiously. Those jewels ought not to have been in the safe at all, you know. Nor the money either, for that matter. It’s all wrong.”
“Most annoying when things break rules like that, isn’t it? Well, I suppose you’ll allow now that Mrs. Plant was speaking the truth this morning, after all.”
“I suppose I shall have to,” said Roger reluctantly. “For the present, at any rate. But it’s very, very extraordinary.”
“That Mrs. Plant should have been speaking the truth? It seemed to me far more extraordinary that she should have been lying, as you were so jolly sure.”
“All right, Alec. Don’t get rattled. No, I wasn’t meaning that exactly. But that she should have been so remarkably agitated about those jewels of hers, as if she thought that somebody was going to steal them! And then that yarn of hers that she thought the police would take them and she wouldn’t get them back. No, say what you like, Alec, it is extraordinary.”
“Women are extraordinary,” said Alec wisely.
“Humph! Certainly Mrs. Plant is.”
“Well, at any rate, she’s exonerated, I take it.”