“Did Mr. Benson have the jewels with him at dinner?”
“Oh, no! I think my refusal of the pearls rather discouraged him.”
Vance paused, looking at her with ingratiating cordiality.
“Tell us now, please, of the gun episode—in your own words, as the lawyers say, hoping to entangle you later.”
But she evidently feared no entanglement.
“The morning after the murder Captain Leacock came here and said he had gone to Mr. Benson’s house about half past twelve with the intention of shooting him. But he had seen Mr. Pfyfe outside and, assuming he was calling, had given up the idea and gone home. I feared that Mr. Pfyfe had seen him, and I told him it would be safer to bring his pistol to me and to say, if questioned, that he’d lost it in France. . . . You see, I really thought he had shot Mr. Benson and was—well, lying like a gentleman, to spare my feelings. Then, when he took the pistol from me with the purpose of throwing it away altogether, I was even more certain of it.”
She smiled faintly at Markham.
“That was why I refused to answer your questions. I wanted you to think that maybe I had done it, so you’d not suspect Captain Leacock.”
“But he wasn’t lying at all,” said Vance.
“I know now that he wasn’t. And I should have known it before. He’d never have brought the pistol to me if he’d been guilty.”