“No, I didn’t lose it at all; I knew where it was all the time, but I was—panic stricken, and had to make a decision on the spur of the moment. I do not regret it.”
There was a pause.
“Do the police know?” she asked.
“About you? No. I think they might find out—not from me.”
“Sit down.” She was very calm. He thought she was going to explain, and was quite satisfied that the explanation was a very simple one, but she had no such intention, as her first words told him.
“I can’t tell you now the why of everything. I am too—what is the word? Too tense. I am not so sure that that is the word, either, but my defences are in being. I dare not relax one of them, or the whole would go. Of course, I knew nothing of the murder—you never dreamt I did?”
He shook his head.
“I did not know until Sunday morning, when I was driving out to Stone Cottage,” she said. “It was only by accident that I bought a paper in the street, and then I made my decision. I went straight to the police station with my story of the lost jewel-case. I knew it was in the vault and I had to find some explanation.”
“How did it come to be in the vault?” Tab knew that the question was futile before it was half out.
“That is part of the other story,” she smiled faintly. “Do you believe me?”