"My guilt?"
"Yes. It was you who murdered my uncle."
"I?" Madame Alpenny stood stock still and stared hard. "It is a lie."
"It is the truth. You learned from my father how matters stood twenty years ago, and our conversation in this very room revived your memory when I mentioned the place where my father had passed his youth. You went down to see my Uncle Madoc and arranged with him that I should be brought to meet him in Parley Wood by means of that advertisement which you showed me. And----"
Madame Alpenny interrupted his flow of words by waving her fat hand for silence. "I admit all this, although I don't know how you found it out."
"Never mind how I found it out. You are guilty."
"What? You tell me a long story of what I have done and which I admit to be true. But you have said nothing which can prove that I murdered the man."
"I was coming to that when you interrupted me," said Hench calmly. "You knew that I would go to the meeting, although I was then ignorant of my relationship to Squire Evans. Therefore you travelled down to Cookley on the first of July and----"
"I never did; I never did," interrupted Madame Alpenny violently, but looking very anxious in spite of her denial.
"You did, and when you arrived at Cookley you went to the Gipsy Stile before I did to stab my uncle."