Mrs. Braxfield was in her tidy kitchen next morning at half-past eight o’clock, giving orders to the charwoman who always came to Woodland Cottage on Mondays, when a knock sounded on her front door. She opened the door herself, and confronted Blick, the Chief Constable, and another man—in plain clothes, but obviously a policeman. The three men, all watching her keenly, saw her start, frown, and turn pale. But they affected to notice nothing unusual, and the Chief Constable’s voice, addressing her, was polite and cheery.
“Good morning, Mrs. Braxfield!” he said. “Just called to have a little chat with you, ma’am. May we come in?”
Mrs. Braxfield turned back into the hall, and opening a door, motioned her visitors into the room in which Blick had listened to Mr. Fransemmery’s story three nights previously. The plain-clothes man, entering last, carefully closed the door, and remained standing before it.
“What do you want?” demanded Mrs. Braxfield. The colour had come back to her cheeks, and she was looking decidedly angry; anger, too, was apparent in her voice.
“We want to have a talk to you about last Tuesday morning, Mrs. Braxfield,” replied the Chief Constable. “Just a quiet talk—between ourselves.”
“I’m not so sure about that ‘between ourselves!’” exclaimed Mrs. Braxfield with unmistakable asperity. “It strikes me that some folk, when they say ‘between ourselves’ mean a good deal of the very opposite. I believe some of you”—here she gave Blick an indignant glance—“some of you have been talking about me, behind my back! Here’s my charwoman just come up from the village, and she says there’s talk going on down there about me and the murder! Nay!—there’s more! They’re saying, some of them, that I had something to do with it—did it myself, some of them are saying, straight out! Now where’s all that originated, I should like to know? But I’ll find out—and then I’ll see what my lawyer has to say!”
“Quite so, Mrs. Braxfield,” agreed the Chief Constable. “You’ll be quite within your rights to do that if false rumours are being spread about you. But we’ve heard of these rumours, and we want to ask a few questions. I’m sure you’ll see that it will be advisable for you to answer them—eh, Mrs. Braxfield?”
“Depends what they are!” replied Mrs. Braxfield, still angry. “I shall please myself!”
“Well, the first thing is this,” continued the Chief Constable, becoming somewhat sterner in manner. “I’m afraid you didn’t tell the exact truth at the inquest the other day. You said that you saw Mr. John Harborough at a certain spot on the hill-side from your chamber window—your bedroom window. Now, Mrs. Braxfield, you couldn’t see him at that place from your bedroom window—there’s the rise of a hill between your house and that particular place. What have you to say to that?”
Mrs. Braxfield had paled again, and started visibly at this, and her lips compressed themselves for an instant.