‘Then why did you quarrel?’
‘Perhaps it was not a quarrel. Maybe I told him it was too dangerous for him to keep coming like that.’
‘And he agreed straight away not to come any more?’
‘Well… he agreed.’
‘Had you some reason why it should be more dangerous than it had been in the past?’
‘I don’t know… it was never safe that he should come.’
‘And he was quite agreeable to give it up immediately on your suggestion?’
‘… yes!’
Gently picked up the third peppermint cream and ate it solemnly. ‘Miss Gretchen,’ he said, ‘would you consider it as being an unusual coincidence that this should happen immediately before your father was murdered?’
Gretchen bit her lip, but said nothing. Gently swallowed the peppermint cream and arranged the remaining three in a triangle. ‘Ah well…’ he sighed, ‘you took your coffee to your room. What did you do then?’
‘I… prayed.’
‘And how long were you occupied with prayer?’
‘That I do not know. Sometimes one is taken away and the prayer is very long. It may have been an hour, or less.’
‘You would not be aware of anything that was taking place in the house while you were praying?’
‘Oh no! I am not in the house, then. It is like a far country where everything is… changed.’
‘And you do not know precisely when your praying ended?’
‘I think it was when Peter came. I heard him and got up.’
‘But you have just said that you would not have been aware of anything which was taking place in the house while you were praying, Miss Gretchen.’
The hands twisted again, finger over finger. ‘Perhaps I got up before that… just before.’
‘And then you came out on the landing to see if it was Peter?’
‘I thought it would be him… I did not know.’
‘He says that you withdrew immediately he looked towards you. Why was that?’
‘Oh… my father would have been angry… he might have come out to see who it was.’
‘But surely there was no need to have hidden away from him — you might have smiled to him or greeted him with a few words from the landing and still have been in a position to withdraw if your father should have appeared?’
‘I don’t know… I thought it was best not to see him.’
‘Tell me what happened after that.’
‘I stayed up there on the landing to hear how my father would receive Peter. At first I heard nothing, but later on they raised their voices and I knew it was not going well for him. I heard Peter call my father some names and my father say things which I could not make out. So I crept down the stairs and along the passage in order to hear them better.’
‘Between the time when Peter went in and the time when you went down, did you see anybody in the hall?’
‘There was nobody there.’
‘You’re quite sure of that?’
‘Oh yes.’
‘Then you did not see Susan pass through from the dining-room to the kitchen?’
‘Susan? Of course! I thought you meant somebody else…’
‘Continue with your account, please.’
‘I could not hear anything when I went down the stairs… they had stopped talking. I stood close to the door, but they had finished, so I thought that Peter must have gone. I was just going to go back again, then…’
Gretchen broke off, shaking her head stupidly.
‘Then?’ prompted Gently.
‘… then I heard my father… scream.’
‘What sort of scream?’
‘Oh, dreadful… terrible!.. as one screams at a terrible injury…’
‘What did you do?’
Her head continued to shake, senselessly, like the head of a mechanical doll. ‘I stood still… I daren’t move… I could not move at all. I don’t know how long it was that I was like that.’
‘But afterwards?’
‘Afterwards… I got the door open and he lay there with the knife in his back… by the safe, where you found him.’
Gently said: ‘Nobody had passed you in the passage and there was nobody else in the study… is that so?’
‘Yes… nobody.’
‘And you heard no movements that suggested the presence of some other person?’
‘I heard movements in the study directly after the scream, but nothing else.’
‘What sort of movements?’
‘First, a thud… then the safe door, which squeaks… after that it was somebody moving across the room.’
‘Nothing else?’
‘No.’
‘Not after you had entered the study?’
‘I heard nothing then… I was not listening.’
‘What did you do?’
Gretchen spread her hands over her knees and took a deep breath. ‘I went and got the knife,’ she said.
‘What was your object?’
‘It was a throwing knife, and Peter could throw knives… also, it would have his fingerprints on it.’
‘Did you notice if the side door was open?’
‘Yes, it was.’
‘And the garden gate?’
‘I did not notice that.’
‘What did you do when you had got the knife?’
‘I wiped the handle of it with the hem of my skirt and hid it in the chest… then I went up to my room again. All the time it was quiet, there was no sign of Susan. I say to myself: “She does not know if I am here or if I am not, and I could easily have slipped out earlier on… if she sees me come in, she will believe it when I say I went out after lunch.” So I put on my coat and creep out through the study. Then of course I went up to the Carlton to find out everything that was on… I came back a little while after Mrs Turner.’
Gently removed another peppermint cream from his shrinking battalion. ‘Doesn’t it occur to you, Miss Gretchen,’ he said, ‘that it would have been considerably wiser to have left the knife where it was, and to have phoned the police immediately?’
Gretchen stared at him with wide-open eyes. ‘But my brother… I had to do something to help him!’
‘And what in effect did you do?’ asked Gently. ‘Your brother was bound to be the principal suspect, with or without the knife. Furthermore, the prints on the knife may not have been his. Didn’t that occur to you, Miss Gretchen?’
‘I don’t know… I didn’t think…’
‘In which case you will have destroyed the one piece of evidence which would have cleared your brother on the spot. But apart from that, why did you take the trouble of establishing an alibi for yourself? It hardly seems worth the trouble. Once you had satisfied yourself about the knife there was no reason why you should not have contacted the police… at least, nothing that appears in the account you have given.’
‘My brother… it give him time to get away.’
‘What connection is there between that and your alibi? Why did you want an alibi, Miss Gretchen? It was a difficult thing to establish and it was bound to bring suspicion on you… quite unnecessarily, by your account.’
