"He came home early in the afternoon to take our little girl to the Zoo—which was a treat she had been looking forward to for a long while. I couldn't go myself, there being the shop to look after. So Mr. Hill and Daphne went to the Zoo, and after they came home and had tea I took her to the pictures while Mr. Hill minded the shop. It was not the picture-palace next door, but the big one in High Street, where they were showing 'East Lynne,' Then when we come home about ten o'clock we all had supper and went to bed."
"And your husband didn't go out again?"
"No, sir. When I got up in the morning to bring him a cup of tea he was still sound asleep."
"But might he not have gone out in the night while you were asleep?"
"No, sir. I'm a very light sleeper, and I wake at the least stir."
Mrs. Hill's story seemed to ring true enough, although she kept her eyes fixed on her interrogator with a kind of frightened brightness. Inspector Chippenfield looked at her in silence for a few seconds.
"So that's the whole truth, is it?" he said at length.
"Yes, sir," the woman earnestly assured him. "You can ask Mr. Hill and he'll tell you the same thing."
Something reminiscent in Inspector Chippenfield's mind responded to this sentence. He pondered over it for a moment, and then remembered that Hill had applied the same phrase to his wife. Evidently there had been collusion, a comparing of tales beforehand. The woman had been tutored by her cunning scoundrel of a husband, but undoubtedly her tale was false.
"The whole truth?" said the inspector, again.