Mrs. Evitt, in a torrent of words, told him all she knew, and all she suspected. It was La Chicot’s husband that had done it, she was sure.
‘Why?’ asked the policeman.
‘Who else should it be? It couldn’t be burglars. You saw yourself that the window was fastened inside. She’d no valuables to tempt any one. Light come light go was her motto, poor thing. Her money went as fast as it came, and if it wasn’t him as did it, why haven’t he come back?’
The policeman asked what she meant by this, whereupon Desrolles told him of Mr. Chicot’s disappearance.
‘I must say that it looks fishy,’ concluded the second floor lodger. ‘I don’t want to breathe a word against a man I like, but it looks fishy. He went out twenty minutes ago to fetch a policeman, and he hasn’t come back yet.’
‘No, nor never will,’ said Mrs. Rawber, who was sitting on the stairs shivering, afraid to go back to her bedroom.
That ground floor bedroom of hers was a dismal place at the best of times, overshadowed by the wall of the yard, and made dark and damp by a protruding cistern, but how would it seem to her now when the house was made horrible by murder?
‘Do you know what time it was when the husband gave the alarm?’ asked the policeman.
‘Not more than twenty minutes ago.’
‘Any of you got a watch?’