“I had forgotten all about the key, which was never used, until we had to leave the house on account of my poor uncle. Then I went over the keys to the different doors by an old list we had left by the man who had the place before my uncle; and it was then I missed the key, and remembered that I had not seen it for a long time.”
Sir Neville made a few notes before he went on.
“Before you missed the key you had had suspicions, of course?”
Nell bowed her head in assent.
“You need not think,” said the magistrate, sharply, “that your making a frank admission of your suspicions can do the lady any harm. We should get at the truth somehow, you may be quite sure.”
“I am telling you all I know,” said Nell, simply.
She herself saw that no concealment was possible any longer. And surely if Miss Bostal were really found guilty of such unlikely crimes, she must have been mad when she committed them.
“When did the idea that Miss Bostal committed the thefts come into your mind for the first time?”
Even now the remembrance of the terrible sensation she had experienced on that memorable occasion caused a frown of pain and distress to contract Nell’s pretty features.
“Jem Stickels—the fisherman who—” She stopped.