"Thank you very much," I said with an official air, and only wished I had a notebook to make it look right. "There's just one thing, Mrs. Antrim. When Mr. Hogenauer was at your house last night, didn't he tell you he meant to go to Bristol this evening?"
She opened her eyes. "He certainly didn't tell me that. He may have told my husband. And, anyway, we're jolly sure he didn't go."
"We are. But," I said to Bowers, "that's what he told you?" "It is! And all the rest of the things I've told you is true, too!"
"But you didn't see him go; you didn't drive him to the station or anything like that?"
"I told you I didn't! I told you the last time I saw the governor alive was just after tea, maybe six o'clock, when he said I could go out if I liked. Then was when he said again to come in early, becos we would probably have a visitor that night."
Here I tried to get the muddle straightened. "He told you he intended to call on Dr. Keppel in Bristol, and that he had every reason to hope Dr. Keppel would be out. In fact, Keppel is here in Moreton Abbot somewhere, and Mr. Hogenauer believed that Keppel would come here to-night. Is that what you understood? Yes. But Hogenauer doesn't go to Bristol, and Keppel doesn't come here."
"Maybe 'e's come," muttered Bowers in a sinister voice, "and gone."
"You mean he might have had something against your employer?"
That word "employer" struck another note of suspicion, but Bowers only looked sullen. "How should I know? They always talked German."
"What's Dr. Keppel like?"