“Certainly I did—in Italy long ago,” was her reply. “I was born in Italy, though my parents were English, and I first knew him in Ancona when quite a girl.”
“He called to visit you at Longton Mansions?”
“He wrote saying he would call, and asked me to name a day. But I was much engaged, and neglected to write to him. He, therefore, never visited me.”
“Then how came he to be found murdered in your flat?” asked the superintendent coldly.
“Ah! That I cannot tell. It is a mystery.”
“Yes,” grunted Ransley, “I agree—it is! But it would not be a mystery if you told me the truth, Mrs. Priestley. You surely cannot expect us to give credence to your denial?”
“I have told the truth,” was the woman’s firm reply. “I have never set eyes upon Enrico Rossi since a month before the war. I then met him in Pisa.”
“Was anyone else in your flat on the night in question?”
“Nobody. My maid, Axford, had gone home to Taunton three days before.”
“What time did you return home on that night?”