She bowed. "You are correct, as usual."
"Mr. Grell left the room for some reason, and during his absence you had an altercation with Goldenburg."
One slender hand resting on the table opened and clenched. She contemplated her finger-nails absently. "Oh, no," she said blandly. "We were always on the most amicable terms."
Foyle leaned over the table, his face set and stern, and gripped her tightly by the wrist. "Do you realise," he demanded, and his voice was fierce, almost theatrical in its intensity, "that you left your finger-prints on the hilt of the dagger with which you killed that man—indisputable evidence that will convict you?"
She shuddered away from him, but his hand-grip bruised the flesh of her wrist as he held her more tightly. He had timed his denunciation well. The strain she had put on herself to meet the situation snapped with the sudden shock. For a brief second she lost her head. She struggled wildly to release herself. His blue eyes, alight with apparent passion, blazed into hers as though he could read her soul.
"I never left finger-prints," she exclaimed wildly. "I wore gloves.... Oh, my God!"
The superintendent's hand opened. The storm of passion on his face died down. The woman, now with a full realisation of what her panic had done, was staring at him in an ecstasy of terror. Green was writing furiously.
It was Foyle who broke the stillness that followed. "That will do, I think," he said in an ordinary tone of voice, as though resuming a dropped conversation. "Have you got that down, Green? Mrs. Goldenburg,"
—he gave her her real name,—"you will be charged with the wilful murder of your husband. It is my duty to warn you that anything you say may be taken down in writing and used as evidence against you."