"Good heavens! Was Miss Benbow waiting outside till three in the morning?"
"Not outside,--in the back entry. It seems that she came home unexpected, and finding the house shut up, she waited, thinking of course Min would come home some time. And so she did. You see, everybody was away from home that evening, so Minnie was free. But Miss Benbow is a good sort all right. When Min said she'd lose her place if Mrs. Crosswell found out about her going off, Miss Benbow said right off that she wouldn't tell."
I held down any adequate expression of my feelings. I merely asked, "What sort of a place is the back entry?"
"Oh, it was quite clean and nice," Minnie spoke up from the depths of her handkerchief. "There's an old rocking chair that I sit in to peel potatoes and things like that. She went to sleep in the old chair and didn't come to no harm. We leave the entry unlocked so that the iceman can get at the refrigerator in the morning."
The thought of Jean cooped up in that dark back entry until three in the morning, even admitting the comfort of the old rocking chair, was sufficiently disturbing, but aside from that there was something perplexing about the story. Somehow it did not fit in with my previous idea of the events of that night. I struggled to fix the discrepancy.
"How about Mr. Benbow?" I asked Minnie suddenly. "You told me you saw him leave the house."
"I did!"
"When? If you were away from the house before seven,--"
"It was just as I was taking Min back home,--a little before three," Royce interrupted. "Just as we were going along the side of the house, past the room Min said was the library, the door opened, and Mr. Benbow came out and ran down the steps. Min didn't want him to see her, so we stood still in the shadow till he was in the street. Then we went on to the back of the house."
"You gave me to understand that it was earlier in the evening," I said reproachfully.