“Yes, Miss Summerson has told me about that,” Allport informed us when I had finished. “Miss Hunter had sent her there and had told her to hide in the hedge until she came to her. Then she took you along with her and Miss Summerson was too frightened of her tormentor to explain. She was in complete subjection.”
“But it was I who heard her moving,” I told him.
“Oh, she would have done it if you hadn’t.”
“And why did you want me to tell her about your dusting the doctor’s room, and that I had noticed that you hadn’t any duster?” I asked, turning to Janet.
“I wanted to know what she said. What did she say, by the way?”
I told her.
“Oh, if only I had known that, she would never have got me into that box-room alone!”
“But surely what she said was innocent and reasonable enough?”
“No, it was neither. You see, she and I had dusted the doctor’s room together directly after breakfast. It proved quite clearly that she knew something of who I was, and that she suspected me, and she would not have suspected me unless she had had a guilty conscience. Knowing that she had dusted the room with me it was a most unnatural thing for her to say. That was why I wanted you to tell her about it, only unfortunately I never had the chance of asking you the result of the little trap.”
“And cook! What about cook?” Ethel asked.