“I did. About half-past eight o’clock that night, Ferrar had seen a young lady—or somebody dressed as one—watching Pym’s house from the opposite entry: just where, it now appears, he later saw Sir Dace. Ferrar thought it was Verena Fontaine. A little later, in fact just after the calamity must have occurred, Alfred Saxby also saw a young lady running from the direction of the house, whom he also took to be Verena. Ferrar and I came to the same conclusion—I don’t know about Saxby—that Verena must have been present when it happened. I thought that, angry at the state Pym was in, she might have given him a push in her vexation, perhaps inadvertently, and that he fell. Who knew?”
“But Verena was elsewhere that evening, you know; at a concert.”
“I knew she said so; but I did not believe it. Of course I know now that both Ferrar and Saxby were mistaken; that it was somebody else they saw, who bore, one must imagine, some general resemblance to her.”
“Well, I think you might have known better,” cried the Squire.
“Yes, I suppose I ought to. But, before the inquest had terminated, I chanced to be alone with Verena; and her manner—nay, her words, two or three she said—seemed to imply her guilt, and also a consciousness that I must be aware of it. I had no doubt at all from that hour.”
“And is it for that reason, consideration for her, that you have partially allowed suspicion to rest upon yourself?” pursued the Squire, hotly.
“Of course. How could I be the means of throwing it upon a defenceless girl?”
“Well, John Tanerton, you are a chivalrous goose!”
“Verena must have known the truth all along.”
“That’s not probable,” contended the Squire. “And Chandler wants to know what is to be done.”