“Fact. Verna shot it.”
“What did Verna shoot?”
Both started at the voice behind them, and turned their heads. The girl stood erect, smiling, in every way winsome and attractive.
“You shouldn’t talk so loud, father dear. You’re giving away our secrets to any passer-by. It doesn’t matter about Mr Denham, of course, because he’s in them: an accomplice, an accessary, both before and after the fact—isn’t that the correct expression?”
Denham was set wondering. “An accessary, both before and after the fact,” he repeated to himself. And this was the girl who had described herself as “utterly uneducated.”
“I’m going for a stroll,” she went on. “Will you come, father?”
“I think not, dear. I promised to meet one or two of them at the club about now.”
“All right.”
Denham started up, with an abruptness somewhat unusual in him.
“Might I accompany you, Miss Halse?” he said, as she was turning away.