“You did not visit High Barn?”
“Oh no.”
“But there was no particular reason why you should not?”
“Why do you ask me that?” she demanded quickly, and in a tone that was quite incompatible with the simple inquiry. Then, recognizing the fact, she added, with shamefaced penitence: “I beg your pardon, Mr Carrados. I am afraid that my nerves have gone to pieces since Thursday. The most ordinary things affect me inexplicably.”
“That is a common experience in such circumstances,” said Carrados reassuringly. “Where were you at the time of the tragedy?”
“I was in my bedroom, which is rather high up, changing. I had driven down to the village, to give an order, and had just returned. Mrs Lawrence told me that she had been afraid there might be quarrelling, but no one would ever have dreamed of this, and then came a loud shot and then, after a few seconds, another not so loud, and we rushed to the door—she and Mary first—and everything was absolutely still.”
“A loud shot and then another not so loud?”
“Yes; I noticed that even at the time. I happened to speak to Mrs Lawrence of it afterwards and then she also remembered that it had been like that.”
Afterwards Carrados often recalled with grim pleasantry that the two absolutely vital points in the fabric of circumstantial evidence that was to exonerate her father and fasten the guilt upon another had dropped from the girl’s lips utterly by chance. But at the moment the facts themselves monopolized his attention.
“You are not disappointed that I can tell you so little?” she asked timidly.