“Then you looked round you. On a little table by Sir Philip’s side was a small bottle. Your first thought was that Sir Philip had poisoned himself—”
“I knew he had,” she interrupted.
“You mean it was suicide?”
“Of course it was suicide.”
“Then why did you stab him?”
“I did not.”
“And more important still”—I slowed down very perceptibly here—“why did you carry away the bottle and hide it in a small opening in the rock wall of the passage beneath the ruined wing?”
Her face whitened a little, but she did not lose her self-control, and sat resolutely facing me.
“You wanted the world to believe that Sir Philip Clevedon had been stabbed to death. Why?”
She faced me unflinchingly—determined, as I could see, not to utter a word.