“What was she doing there?”
“Didn’t she tell you?”
“She did not.”
“I understood from her that it was her firm determination to tell you everything—to take you fully into her confidence, and throw all the light she could on the tragedy.”
“She told us that she was at the farm the night Captain Marsland was there,” said Gillett. “She sought shelter there from the storm and went upstairs with Captain Marsland when the body was discovered. He said nothing whatever about this in his statement to Westaway.”
“Nothing whatever,” said Westaway. “He led me to believe he was entirely and absolutely alone.”
“But why didn’t she come to the police station that night and make her own statement?” asked Crewe. “Why all this delay?”
“Her first impulse was to keep her name out of it because of the way people would talk,” said Sergeant Westaway, who, as an old resident of Ashlingsea, felt better qualified than Detective Gillett to interpret the mental process of one of the inhabitants of the little town.
“And so she asked Marsland to say nothing about her presence at the farm?” asked Crewe.
“She admits that,” was Westaway’s reply.