“When I reached home.”
“Didn’t the absence of the hatpin strike you then?”
“No, I didn’t think of it. I could not even say for certain that it was absent.”
The coroner sat for a moment or two drawing figures on his blotting-paper, then turned suddenly towards her.
“Did you go out again that night?”
As Miss Kitty Clevedon looked casually round, our glances met and for a brief second her eyes held mine, hardly in questioning, certainly not in fear, but with some subtle suggestion I could not then interpret.
“No,” she said with inimitable composure, “I did not go out again.”
That might have been perfectly true since it was at least possible that she had not gone straight from White Towers to Hapforth House. Though it was hardly possible she could have been absent all the evening without some remark. If, on the other hand, she was lying, and I had good reason for knowing that she possessed all the qualities essential to success in that very difficult art, then her midnight expedition had been secret. It was a tangle that would have to be straightened out later, and so far, I hadn’t either end of the string in my fingers.
“Did you see Sir Philip Clevedon?”
“No, I went to his study, but he was not there and I did not wait.”