"Rich," repeated Marion, her voice curdling with bitterness.
"Anyone who has more than six chimneys is rich. Now. If you are not too shocked to think, consider. We know that the girl was never at The Franchise, that she could not—" But Marion interrupted him.
"Do you know it?" she asked.
"Yes," Robert said.
Her challenging eyes lost their challenge, and her glance dropped.
"Thank you," she said quietly.
"If the girl was never there, how could she have seen the house!… She did see it somehow. It is too unlikely for belief that she could be merely repeating a description that someone else gave her…. How could she see it? Naturally, I mean."
"You could see it, I suppose, from the top deck of a bus," Marion said. "But there are no double-decker buses on the Milford route. Or from on top of a load of hay. But it is the wrong time of year for hay."
"It may be the wrong time for hay," croaked Mrs. Sharpe, "but there is no season for lorry-loads. I have seen lorries loaded with goods as high as any hay waggon."
"Yes," Marion said. "Suppose the lift the girl got was not in a car, but on a lorry."