“He won't say where he was?” she demanded in a trembling voice. “Why not?”
Sir Clinton made a vague gesture with his hand.
“I can hardly tell you his motive. Perhaps he hasn't an alibi. I've told you what we know.”
He looked keenly at the girl before him, evidently expecting something; and he was not disappointed.
“I can tell you where he was at that time,” Avice said at last. “Probably you won't believe me, but this is true, at any rate. He and I dined together in town that evening and after dinner we went home to my house. We had a lot to talk over. We reached my house about half-past eight. And then we began to talk things over. We had such a lot to discuss that the time passed without our noticing it; and when at last he got up to go, it was between one and two in the morning. So you see he couldn't possibly have been at the bungalow.”
Sir Clinton interjected a question:
“Why didn't Dr. Silverdale tell us all this frankly when he was questioned about his movements during that night?”
Avice Deepcar flushed at the direct attack, but she evidently had made up her mind to make a clean breast of the whole business.
“I told you that Dr. Silverdale was with me that night from dinner-time until the early hours of the morning. As it happened, my maid was away that day and did not return until the next afternoon. You must have a pretty good idea of what people would have said about me if they got to know I'd been alone with Dr. Silverdale in my house. I shouldn't have cared, really; because there was nothing in it. We were simply talking. But I expect that when you questioned him he thought of my position. He's a married man—at least he was a married man then—and some people would have twisted the whole business into something very unpleasant for me, I'm sure. So I think, knowing him well, that he very likely didn't want to give me away. He knew he'd had nothing to do with the murders, and I expect he imagined that the real murderer would be detected without his having to give any precise account of his doings on that night. If I'd known that he was running the risk of arrest, of course, I'd have insisted on his telling what really happened; but I've been out of town and I'd no idea things had got to this pitch.”
Flamborough intervened as she paused for a moment.