“Three-quarters of an hour.”
“Ah! Now, you mentioned a cliff path leading from Wandsborough. Would that lead one past Smugglers’ Ladder?”
“Oh, no, sir. Nowhere near it. Why, it turns inland before you come within half a mile of Smugglers’ Ladder.”
“Thank you.”
“Wait a moment, please,” said Mr Benham suavely, as Grainger was about to leave the box. “You say this Robert Durnford came to stay at ‘The Silver Fleece’ the day before Hubert Dorrien was lost. That was on a Saturday evening. Did you at any time between that and Sunday evening have any conversation with him about the Dorrien family?”
The prisoner’s head sank lower and lower. That devil of a counsel!
“Well sir, we did.”
“Kindly repeat it.”
“Well, sir, as far as I can remember, the gentleman said he’d known the old Squire, the General’s brother. First he asked whose the house was, an’ then we got talkin’, and I told him a little about the General—just quietly and between ourselves, like.”
“Quite so. And what else did you tell him?”