“Certainly. It’s been a great many years since I’ve used it—ten, perhaps. It was at a time that I was going frequently to Orchards, when Mr. Thorne, Senior, was alive.”
“And you have never used it since?”
“No. It’s not a road that anyone would use unless he were going to Orchards. It’s practically a blind alley.”
“Again I must ask you to refrain from qualifications and elaborations. ‘No’ is a reply to that question. The fact remains, doesn’t it, that here was an unobtrusive short cut to Orchards that you haven’t seen fit to tell us about?”
Stephen Bellamy smiled slightly—that gracious and ironic smile, so oddly detached as to be disconcerting. “I’m afraid that I can’t answer that either yes or no—either would be misleading. I had completely forgotten that there was such a road.”
“Completely forgotten it, had you? Had Mrs. Ives forgotten it too?”
“I’m sure that I don’t know.”
“Mr. Bellamy, is not this road, known as Thorne Lane, the one that you and Mrs. Ives took to reach Orchards the night of the murder?”
Mr. Bellamy frowned faintly in concentration. “I beg your pardon?”
“Did you not use Thorne Lane to reach Orchards on the night of the murder?”