“No, no, no!” she cried, “of course I’ll do exactly what you advise. I’ll tell Harry that his meeting a girl in that way and in that place was not so very strange—nay, more, I’ll try and force myself to believe it!”
“That’s right,” he said heartily, “now you’re acting like a brave, sensible girl, and not like a foolish, obstinate woman.”
“But supposing he says it was all an invention of Lucy Warren’s——?” She looked at him anxiously. “Then I suppose I must get Lucy Warren to say she told a lie?”
“Yes, that will be the next step, and if you fail I shall succeed when I have got her in the witness-box,” he said grimly. “That is supposing she did tell a lie. But, Miss Bower——?”
“Yes?”
“Suppose that Garlett admits that he did meet a lady in the wood—what then?”
He answered his own question.
“You have then what we are looking for—a second human being with an interest in Mrs. Garlett’s death. I suppose,” he said suddenly, “that it has not occurred to you that the young woman may have been no other than Lucy Warren herself?”
“There are things, Sir Harold, which I suppose even you would admit are impossible,” she said quietly.
He looked at her, and remained silent. How make this girl understand that innumerable men of a superior social caste have made love, will make love, are making love all the time, to girls like Lucy Warren? From the moment he had read the notes made by Kentworthy, he had asked himself whether after all, Lucy Warren, in her obstinate determination not to reveal the name of the woman with whom she said she had seen her master, might not have had the very best of reasons for her obstinacy.