“Then—then, after that, I don’t remember much. All the rest of it was sheer nightmare. I do remember Sue saying that we might retrace the route that Mimi started over toward the Conroys, on the bare chance that she had had some kind of collapse at the roadside. But that was no good, of course. And finally we decided that there was nothing more to do till morning, and that I’d better get Sue home. I drove her back to the house——”
“To your house?”
“No, no; the Ives’ house. I dropped her at the front gate. I didn’t drive in. I asked her to let me know if Pat was there, and she said that if he were she’d turn on the light in the study twice. I waited outside by the car for what seemed a hundred years, and after a long time the light in the study went on once, and off, and on again and off, and I got in the car and drove away.”
“What time was that, Mr. Bellamy?”
“I’m not sure—about quarter to eleven, perhaps. Mrs. Ives had asked me what time it was when we stopped at the gate. It was shortly after ten-thirty.”
“Did you go straight home?”
“Not directly—no. I drove around for quite a bit, but I couldn’t possibly tell you for how long. It’s like trying to remember things in a delirium.”
“But it was only after you heard that Mrs. Bellamy had not been at the movies that you were reduced to this condition—before that everything is quite clear?”
“Oh, quite.”
“And you are entirely clear that at the time fixed for the murder you and Mrs. Ives were a good ten miles away from the gardener’s cottage at Orchards?”