She started to her feet.
“There were no love passages,” she cried passionately, “none, none at all! I hardly knew Mr. Garlett. Oh! do believe that! Indeed, indeed it’s the truth!” More calmly she added: “The cricket season was beginning, and he was constantly away from home.”
“And yet you told me just now that you saw him most days at the factory?”
“He used to come in for a few moments to see his letters. I was generally present when he did come in, with the man who really managed the business—Mr. Dodson.”
He glanced down at the paper he was holding.
“And yet,” he observed, “slight as was your acquaintance with your employer, you walked back with him from Grendon to Terriford the day before Mrs. Garlett’s death. Or do you deny having done that?”
She sat down again.
“Did I?” she said falteringly. And then she exclaimed—while he told himself that she was perhaps the best actress he had ever encountered in the course of his work—“Yes, I did! I remember it now. We came in to Miss Cheale’s sitting room just when she had dismissed a servant. But for that I should not have remembered having walked home with Mr. Garlett.”
“Now that your memory has become more clear, Miss Bower, I want you to remember something else. At what time—I mean about what date—was the word ‘marriage’ first mentioned by Mr. Garlett with respect to yourself?” He leaned forward. “Was it before Mrs. Garlett’s death, or immediately after it?”
Again she looked at him quite straight. She could see his shadowed face—to her it was the face of a sneering devil.