“I will be, Sir Harold—indeed I will be!”
“Well, we may take it, I suppose, that it was a case of love at first sight; that Mr. Garlett was taken with you from the first (as well he might be!) and then he did persuade you, wrongly I admit, to meet him at night in this wood? When I say night, I am well aware that it was not really night. From what this young servant says, she had to be in by ten, so that fixes the time. Can you give me any kind of reason why you should have met him? Any reason you can think of, or even—hum!—invent, will be of value. I realize that you were working with Mr. Garlett, and that you had plenty to talk about of a—well! ordinary, straightforward kind.”
Jean Bower got up from her chair so suddenly that he felt startled.
“I don’t know if anything I say will convince you that I am telling the truth,” she said desperately. “But I swear to you most solemnly before God that I never met Mr. Garlett, either before his wife’s death or since, secretly at night, in that wood or anywhere else. What is more, I am convinced that he never did such a thing, and I can’t believe that Lucy Warren thinks that he did!”
He was impressed in spite of himself.
“What sort of a girl is Lucy Warren? Do you know her?” he asked abruptly.
“I know her quite well. In fact, the day before Mrs. Garlett’s death I was actually present when, as a result of something she had done, she was given notice to leave the Thatched House.”
“I admit,” said Sir Harold slowly, “that that does provide from our point of view a useful complication. The evidence of a dismissed servant is always regarded as tainted.”
He looked, for the first time, really puzzled and ill at ease.
“Let me see,” he said. “Kentworthy, who was for so many years employed by the Home Office, is the detective we are employing, isn’t he?”