Something in that question made her hesitate. "Some time," she said.
"Had he wronged you somehow?"
But her tight mouth shut still more tightly. Barker looked at her rather helplessly, and then Grant could see him turning on the other tack.
"Well, I'm very sorry, Mrs. Wallis," he said, as if the interview were ended, "but we can't put any belief in your story. It has all the appearance of a cock-and-bull yarn. You've been thinking too much about the affair. People do that, you know, quite often, and then they begin to imagine that they did the thing themselves. The best thing you can do is to go home and think no more about it."
As Barker had expected, that got her. A faint alarm appeared on her red face. Then her shrewd black eyes went to Grant and examined him. "I don't know who you may be," she said to Barker, "but Inspector Grant believes me all right."
"This is Superintendent Barker," Grant said, "and my chief. You'll have to tell the superintendent a lot more than that, Mrs. Wallis, before he can believe you."
She recognized the rebuff, and before she had recovered Barker said again, "Why did you kill Sorrell? Unless you give us an adequate reason, I'm afraid we can't believe you. There's nothing at all to connect you with the murder except that little scar. I expect it's that little scar that has set you thinking about all this, isn't it, now?"
"Not it!" she said. "D'you think I'm crazy? Well, I'm not. I did it all right, and I've told you how I did it exactly. Isn't that enough?"
"Oh, no, you could quite easily have made up the tale of how you did it. We've got to have proof."
"Well, I've got the sheath of the knife at home," she said in sudden triumph. "There's your proof for you."