“Do you know Mrs. Halfleet?” I asked my own housekeeper when I again reached home.
“Oh, yes, quite well,” she replied. “I have known her for years. A little stand-offish in her manner, but quite pleasant face to face.”
“About how old would she be?” I queried.
“Oh, well, let me see. I am—yes, she must be quite sixty, perhaps a year or two older.”
“Not a young woman, anyway.”
“Oh, dear no, not a young woman. She is the widow of a minister, a Methodist, I think, who was at a church in Midlington when he died. That must be a good sixteen years ago. Lady Clevedon, who was living at White Towers then, her husband being alive, brought her in as housekeeper, and the present—I mean the late—Sir Philip kept her on. She is sister to Mrs. Lepley, but far more of a lady—”
I switched the conversation on to other lines, leaving Mrs. Halfleet for later investigation.
The case, you will note, has advanced another stage. The weapon has been identified. The queer hatpin, with the three-cornered blade and the silver knob, was the property of Lady Clevedon, who lived at Hapforth House. Miss Kitty Clevedon borrowed it and so conveyed it to White Towers where, apparently, she left it. That was all very interesting and quite simple, but probably irrelevant. The question was not who had owned the hatpin or who had worn it, but who had used it.
The question of time becomes interesting here. Tulmin, the valet, had seen his master alive at 11.30, and the girl had visited me at 11.53. She certainly had committed no murder at White Towers in that interval. It was a physical impossibility. I had carefully assured myself regarding that. It would have required at the very minimum another fifteen or twenty minutes. But I had lost her in the darkness somewhere before 2 a.m. As I have already said, it was seven minutes past two when I reached Stone Hollow again on that night (or rather early morning), and allowing for the time I stood after she had evaded me, and for the walk homewards, I judged that it would be about 1.15 when she disappeared into the darkness. What had her movements been after that?
It must not be supposed that I suspected the girl of having had any hand in the tragedy, though I by no means ruled her out. Her beauty and youth did not weigh with me at all. I had found both in even greater measure in proven criminals. Besides which, a murder is not invariably a crime.