“That’s right! Well, when she couldn’t do anything with him, she up and killed him.”
“Women, he wrote.”
“Of course; Eliza Gurney helped. Probably Eliza did the actual deed. She’d cut off anybody’s head that Letitia Prall told her to! But those are the women you’re looking for, and if you want to jail me for telling you, go ahead!”
“No,” Gibbs told her, “you won’t be jailed for telling that,—if it’s true. But, if it isn’t,—you want to be careful about slander, you know.”
Kate looked a little startled, but Mrs Everett laughed.
“Don’t be afraid, Kate; Mr. Gibbs can’t punish you for an opinion. You haven’t stated any facts.”
“Except that she heard Miss Prall’s threat to kill Sir Herbert,” Gibbs reminded her.
“It wasn’t a threat at all. I heard her say it, and it was merely an outburst of anger. I doubt if she meant it——”
“Do you doubt her capable of committing such a crime?” the detective asked, so suddenly that he took his listener by surprise.
But she was not to be caught. “My theory is,” she smiled, “that as Goethe says, ‘We are all capable of crime, even the best of us.’ I truly think that most human beings could commit crime, given sufficient motive and opportunity.”