“Ah! you will know in due course,” was her answer. “Ask me no questions now, only help me to escape.”
“How?”
“Listen, and I will tell you of the plans I have formed. To-night I have thought it all out, and have made resolve. The car is in the shed over against the kennels. I backed it in yesterday, therefore it will run down the hill along the avenue, and right out through the lodge gates without petrol and noiselessly. Once in the Chichester road, I can drive it away without awakening either the house or the Grants who keep the gate. You’ll come with me.”
“Where?”
“To London.”
“And what would people say when it was known that you and I left together in the middle of the night?”
“Oh! they’d only say it was one of Tibbie’s mad freaks. It is useful sometimes,” she added, “to have a reputation for eccentricity. It saves so many explanations.”
“Yes, that’s all very well, but it is not a judicious course in any way.”
Suddenly I recollected the woman Mason whom I saw at all costs must be got out of the way. As a servant she might get a view of the dead man out of curiosity and identify him as her mistress’s lover.
“No,” I added, after a moment’s reflection. “If you really want to escape to London go in exactly the opposite direction. Run across the New Forest to Bournemouth, for instance. Take Mason with you. Go to the Bath Hotel, and then slip away by train say up to Birmingham, and from there to London.”