“And I take it that everything connected with the dispensary was swept away?”
“A garage has been put up in the place where he used to make up the medicines.”
“Is there a chemist’s shop near by?”
“No,” said Jean quickly. “But the daughter of my uncle’s predecessor, a lady called Miss Prince, keeps certain simple medicines in her house, which she gives to the village people.”
Sir Harold made a note of the name on his blotting paper. “I suppose we may take it,” he observed, “that that lady had no arsenic in her possession?”
“If she had, I feel sure she would have said so,” said Jean. “As a matter of fact, she is Mr. Garlett’s tenant.”
“How old is Miss Prince?” he asked abruptly.
“I should think she must be about sixty——”
“I see. Now, Miss Bower, I must ask you a delicate question. Can you think of any young woman, apart from yourself, who was on friendly terms with Mr. Garlett at the time of his wife’s death?”
To his surprise the girl became first distressingly red and then very pale. A struggle was going on in her mind. Had the big, florid man sitting opposite to her been just a little other than he was, she would have forced herself to tell him of the curious, as she believed utterly untrue, gossip, concerning her lover’s meeting with some mysterious young woman in the wood. But somehow she could not bring herself to mention the sordid story to Sir Harold Anstey.