“Doesn’t it seem odd to you that no one saw Miss Saunders when she came back to the house?”
“No. They were all in their rooms, except Shine who was down at the Point and Mrs. Stokes who was reading on the balcony. I asked her particularly if she’d noticed Sybil pass and she said no, she’d been interested in her book and wouldn’t have noticed anybody.”
“I’d give a good deal to know what Miss Saunders did in that time. I think it would let in some light.”
“How so?”
Rawson narrowed his eyes in contemplation of an unfolding line of thought:
“Well, what took her out again to the Point after she’d come in? She hadn’t a good deal of time and she wanted to change her clothes before supper. It looks to me as if she met some one in the house, some one who wanted her to go down there with them.”
“Mrs. Cornell says she was alone.”
“She might have started alone and gone to meet them.”
“Then it couldn’t have been Stokes,” said Williams, “for Mr. Bassett says she wouldn’t speak to him if she could help it.”
“That’s right,” Bassett nodded in agreement. “She’d never have made a date with him. She shunned him like the plague. If you knew her you wouldn’t see anything in that going out. She was restless and unhappy and the place here—the sea, the views—fascinated her. It was our last evening and it was like her not to want to miss any of it, slip out for a minute to enjoy the end of it.”