The housekeeper went on:
“No knife was found, and though they saw some footsteps coming to the house, they found none going away again. That was odd and mysterious. Especially,” the housekeeper looked round her again, and dropped her voice, “as Sir Robert had been out in the grounds very late.”
“Sir Robert!” echoed Rhoda, appalled.
Mrs. Hawkes nodded.
“That was the part of it that made us all uncomfortable,” she said, below her breath. “And that was why they wanted you to come forward. And you would have had to come, only your father said you knew nothing about it at all, and that it would have endangered your life to have had to come.”
“Oh!” gasped Rhoda.
“For everybody thought even more than they said. Everybody wanted to know if you had seen anybody.”
She paused, and tried to look into Rhoda’s face. But the girl kept her head obstinately bent. Not for the world would she have had the nurse see the look of horror which she felt there must be in her own eyes.
It was not that she thought that Sir Robert had killed his servant: not for one moment would she have admitted such a possibility. But she could herself have borne witness to the fact that some one did go upstairs after the struggle in the drawing room.
Who could it have been?