“As far as we are able to judge—we who have been looking into the case—the late Mr. Stewart met his death somewhere about eleven o’clock—just about an hour after Butterworth saw you out.”
The Colonel shrugged his square shoulders. “An hour is a long time, gentlemen, I would remind you! And Charles Stewart may not have been with his father after all. Events may have conspired to prevent it—there’s no knowing. You are working more or less in the dark.”
Anthony ranged himself with the Colonel. “I quite agree with you, sir. Half-a-dozen people might have been in the library with Mr. Stewart between ten and eleven o’clock that night—there is no evidence to the contrary—that’s certain. But this interview that you mention, Colonel! Are you convinced that it was to be on the subject that had caused Mr. Stewart such displeasure? That seems to me to matter a great deal.”
“I can’t be certain with regard to that,” was the Colonel’s reply. “Mr. Stewart didn’t tell me so exactly—but I think that I should be perfectly justified in assuming so—coming as it did after what he had just previously told me.”
Goodall took a hand again. “Coming back to the details of your own visit, Colonel—I’m sure you won’t mind answering a few more questions. How did you travel over to Assynton Lodge on that particular evening?”
The Colonel’s reply came quickly with a touch of annoyance in his voice. “By car, of course, my own car. What’s your point in asking a question like that?”
Goodall affected not to hear the question—he made no immediate answer. “So that I presume,” he continued, “that you were home here by ten-fifteen easily?”
“I should imagine that would be about the time,” said Colonel Leach-Fletcher testily, “though what the blazes all this has to do with the affair——”
Goodall intervened again. “In that quarter of an hour’s journey—did you pass anybody or notice anybody on the road?”
“I did not,” snapped the Colonel. “It was a perfectly glorious night, and if I had passed anybody, I probably shouldn’t have seen them—my attention is always too much taken up in driving my car.”