"I know you will answer this frankly, Mrs. Wynn: Has there never been any suspicion in your mind that Betty's story might not be true? Even a momentary suspicion?"
"Not even a momentary one. Why should there be? She has always been a truthful child. Even if she hadn't, how could she invent a long circumstantial story like that without being found out? The police asked her all the questions they wanted to; there was never any suggestion of accepting her statement as it stood."
"When she first told her story to you, did she tell it all in a piece?"
"Oh, no; it was spread over a day or two. The outline, first. And then filling in the details as she remembered them. Things like the window in the attic being round."
"Her days of coma had not blurred her memory."
"I don't think they would in any case. I mean, with Betty's kind of brain. She has a photographic memory."
Has she indeed! thought Robert; both ears erect and wide open.
"Even as a small child she could look at the page of a book-a child's book, of course-and repeat most of the contents from the picture in her mind. And when we played the Kim game-you know? the objects on the tray-we had to put Betty out of the game because she invariably won. Oh, no, she would remember what she saw."
Well, there was another game in which the cry was "Growing warm!" Robert remembered.
"You say she was always a truthful child-and everyone supports you in that-but did she never indulge in romanticising her own life, as children sometimes do?"