He looked at her inquiringly and she shook her head, smiling sadly as she did so.
“But there is no reason why, after all, you might not know who did it,” said the sergeant in a coaxing voice which represented an appeal to her to do her best to justify his high hopes. “In some respects it is a mysterious crime, and although the police have their suspicions—and very strong suspicions too—they are always glad to get reliable information, especially when it supports their suspicions.”
“And whom do you suspect?” she asked.
Sergeant Westaway was taken aback at such a question. It was such an outrageous attempt to penetrate the veil of official secrecy that he could refrain from rebuking her only by excusing it on the ground of her youth and inexperience.
“At present I can say nothing,” was his reply.
She turned aside from his official manœuvring and took up her own story:
“What I came to tell you is that I was at Cliff Farm on the night that poor Mr. Lumsden was shot.”
“You were there when he was shot?” exclaimed the sergeant.
“No; he was dead when I got there.”
“Did you hear the shot?”