"Did you hear the sound, of the shot, sir?"
"Yes, and then Miss White giving a scream."
"Did you form any impression where it came from?"
"Well, I don't know," said Jones hesitantly. "You know what it is when you hear someone shooting, and don't pay much heed. Over there, I should have said."
The Inspector watched him wave vaguely in the direction of the thickets on the Palings' side of the river, and demanded to know which way Wally had been facing when he was shot. Mr. Jones at once disclaimed all knowledge, explaining that although he had glanced towards the stream upon Janet's first calling attention to Wally's approach down the path on the opposite slope, he had not looked that way again until after the shot had sounded.
Janet, who was still clutching a crumpled handkerchief with which she from time to time dabbed at her nose, interrupted to say in a lachrymose voice that she had seen the whole thing, and that Wally had been walking across the bridge towards the Dower House.
"If that's so," said the Inspector, "we can take it the shot didn't come from where you thought it did, sir. Else the gentleman would have got the bullet in his back, which you can see for yourself he didn't. Now, miss: you say you saw the whole thing. Would you be good enough to tell me just exactly what you did see?"
"Oh, I didn't see a thing!" said Janet earnestly. "I mean, there was absolutely nothing. I saw poor Mr. Carter coming down to the bridge, and I said, "Here comes Mr. Carter," or something like that, but I don't exactly remember what; and then I said, "I'll go and make the tea," or words to that effect, because I'd been waiting till Mr. Carter arrived, you see, and left the kettle on the stove. Oh dear, and it's there still!" She added, in sharpened accents, as she recalled this circumstance: "It must all have boiled away by this time, and probably burned a hole in the kettle! Oh, I can't think how I could have been so forgetful!"
"Never mind about the kettle!" said White. "Answer the Inspector!"
"It's the new kettle!" said Janet, in very much the tone that Hugh felt convinced the Mad Hatter must have used in discussing the effect of the best butter upon his watch.