“Something,” Harrison agreed, shrewdly guessing at her meaning. “So far as you and Mr. Fell are concerned at least. But—well—I’ll tell you in a moment why I want to know—could you say what the time was when you got to the plantation?”
“A little before ten,” she told him. “I heard the stable clock in Orton Park strike after I’d been there a few minutes.”
“Hm! hm! And what did you do exactly between ten o’clock and—er—half-past twelve or so?” Harrison enquired.
Phyllis Messenger’s face glowed suddenly red. “I—I don’t know,” she said after a marked pause.
“Did you go to sleep, for instance?” Harrison asked with a friendly smile.
She shook her head. “It wasn’t a sleep,” she said, and then went on quickly: “Oh, you said you knew—something. Don’t you know how—how unhappy I was?”
Mr. Harrison turned his head away and stared at the ferns in the fireplace. “I’ve heard something,” he murmured.
“About my friend Rhoda Burton?” Miss Messenger said.
“Ah! yes. She—she committed suicide about a month ago, I believe?” Harrison mumbled.
“Well, I meant to do that, too,” Phyllis Messenger burst out with a sudden boldness. “In there, where they found me. I meant to—to strangle myself with my tulle scarf. I tied it round my neck and I meant to do it. And then I couldn’t.”