under her breath and stalked to the front door.
It was Miss Hinchliffe.
''Evening,' she said in her gruff voice. 'Sorry to barge in. Inspector's rung up, I expect?'
'He didn't tell us you were coming,' said Julia, leading the way to the drawing-room.
'He said I needn't come unless I liked,' said Miss Hinchliffe. 'But I do like.'
Nobody offered Miss Hinchliffe sympathy or mentioned Miss Murgatroyd's death. The ravaged face of the tall vigorous woman told its own tale, and would have made any expression of sympathy an impertinence.
'Turn all the lights on,' said Miss Blacklog. 'And put more coal on the fire. I'm cold – horribly cold. Come and sit here by the fire, Miss Hinchliffe. The Inspector said he would be here in a quarter of an hour. It must be nearly that now.'
'Mitzi's come down again,' said Julia.
'Has she? Sometimes I think that girl's mad – quite mad. But then perhaps we're all mad.'
'I've no patience with this saying that all people who commit crimes are mad,' barked Miss Hinchliffe. 'For me, all criminals are sane, intelligent even… in an awful way.'
They heard the sound of an approaching car, and soon Inspector Craddock came in, bringing Coronel and Mrs. Easterbrook and Edmund and Mrs. Swettenham along.
All looked circumspect. In a low voice, Colonel Easterbrook said:
'Oh, oh! A nice fire!'
Mrs. Swettenham tried to cheer the atmosphere up, producing almost a parody of herself:
'It's weird, isn't it?' she said. 'All of this I mean. It's best to say nothing. The trouble is that we don't know who will be next… like in epidemics, isn't it?'
'Mother,' said Edmund in a voice of acute suffering, 'can't you shut up?'
'I'm sure, dear, I don't want to say a word,' said Mrs. Swettenham, and sat down on the sofa by Julia. Inspector Craddock stood near the door. Facing him, almost in a row, were the three women. Julia and Mrs. Swettenham on the sofa. Mrs. Easterbrook on the arm of her husband's chair. He had not brought about this arrangement, but it suited him very well.
Miss Blacklog and Miss Hinchliffe were crouching over the fire. Edmund stood near them. Phillipa was far back in the shadows.
Craddock began without preamble.
'You all know that Miss Murgatroyd's been killed,' he began. 'We've reason to believe that the person who killed her was a woman. And for certain other reasons we can narrow it down still more. I'm about to ask certain ladies here to account for what they were doing between the hours of four and four-twenty this afternoon. I have already had an account of her movements from – from the young lady who has been calling herself Miss Simmons. I will ask her to repeat that statement. At the same time, Miss Simmons, I must caution you that you need not answer if you think your answers may incriminate you, and anything you say will be taken down by Constable Edwards and may be used as evidence in court.'
'You have to say that, don't you?' said Julia. She was rather pale, but still composed. 'I repeat that between four and four-thirty I was walking along the field leading down to the brook by Compton Farm. I came back to the road by that field with three poplars in it. I didn't meet anyone as far as I can remember. I did not go near Boulders.'
'Mrs. Swettenham?'
Edmund said, 'Are you cautioning all of us?'
The Inspector turned to him.
'No. At the moment only Miss Simmons. I have no reason to believe that any other statement made will be incriminating, but anyone, of course, is entitled to have a solicitor present and to refuse to answer questions unless he is present.'
'Oh, but that would be very silly and a complete waste of time,' cried Mrs. Swettenham. 'I'm sure I can tell you at once exactly what I was doing. That's what you want, isn't it? Shall I begin now?'
'Yes, please, Mrs. Swettenham.'
'Now, let me see.' Mrs. Swettenham closed her eyes, opened them again. 'Of course I had nothing at all to do with killing Miss Murgatroyd. I'm sure everybody here knows that. But I'm a woman of the world, I know quite well that the police have to ask all the most unnecessary questions and write the answers down very carefully, because it's all for what they call 'the record.' That's it, isn't it?' Mrs. Swettenham flashed the question at the diligent Constable Edwards and added graciously, 'I'm not going too fast for you, I hope?' Constable Edwards, a good shorthand writer, but with little social savoir-faire, turned red to the ears and replied:
'It's quite all right, madam. Well, perhaps a little slower would be better.'
Mrs. Swettenham resumed her discourse with emphatic pauses where she considered a comma or a full stop might be appropriate.
'Well, of course it's difficult to say – exactly – because I've not got, really, a very good sense of time. And ever since the war quite half our clocks haven't gone at all, and the ones that do go are often either fast or slow or stop because we haven't wound them up.' Mrs. Swettenham paused to let this picture of confused time sink in and then went on earnestly, 'What I think I was doing at four o'clock was turning the heel of my sock (and for some extraordinary reason I was going round the wrong way – in purl, you know, not plain) but if I wasn't doing that, I must have been outside snipping off the dead chrysanthemums – no, that was earlier – before the rain.'
'The rain,' said the inspector, 'started at 4:10 exactly.'
'Did it now? That helps a lot. Of course, I was upstairs putting a wash-basin in the passage where the rain always comes through. And it was coming through so fast that I guessed at once that the gutter was stopped up again. So I came down and got my mackintosh and rubber boots. I called Edmund, but he didn't answer, so I thought perhaps he'd got to a very important place in his novel and I wouldn't disturb him, and I've done it quite often myself before. With the broom handle, you know, tied on to that long thing you push up windows with.'
'You mean,' said Craddock, noting bewilderment on his subordinate's face, 'that you were cleaning out the gutter?'
'Yes, it was all choked up with leaves. It took a long time and I got rather wet, but I got it clear at last. And then I went in and got changed and washed – so smelly, dead leaves – and then I went into the kitchen and put the kettle on. It was 6:15 by the kitchen clock.'
Constable Edwards blinked.
'Which means,' finished Mrs. Swettenham triumphantly, 'that it was exactly twenty minutes to five.
'Or near enough,' she added.
'Did anybody see what you were doing whilst you were out cleaning the gutter?'
'No, indeed,' said Mrs. Swettenham, 'I'd soon have roped them in to help if they had! It's a most difficult thing to do single-handed.'
'So, by your own statement, you were outside, in a mackintosh and boots, at the time when the rain was coming down, and according to you, you were employed during that time in cleaning out a gutter but you have no one who can substantiate that statement?'
'You can look at the gutter,' said Mrs. Swettenham. 'It's beautifully clear.'
'Did you hear your mother call to you, Mr. Swettenham?'
'No,' said Edmund. 'I was fast asleep.'
'Edmund,' said his mother reproachfully, 'I thought you were writing.'
Inspector Craddock turned to Mrs. Easterbrook. 'Now, Mrs. Easterbrook?'
'I was sitting with Archie in his study,' said Mrs. Easterbrook fixing wide innocent eyes on him. 'We were listening to the wireless together, weren't we, Archie?'
There was a pause. Colonel Easterbrook was very red in the face. He took his wife's hand in his.
'You don't understand these things, kitten,' he said.
'I – well, I must say, Inspector, you've rather sprung this business on us. My wife, you know, has been terribly upset by all this. She's nervous and highly strung and doesn't appreciate the importance of – of taking due consideration before she makes a statement.'
'Archie,' cried Mrs. Easterbrook reproachfully, 'are you going to say you weren't with me?'
'Well, I wasn't, was I, my dear? I mean one's got to stick to the facts. Very important in this sort of inquiry. I was talking to Lampson, the farmer at Croft End, about some chicken netting. That was about a quarter to four. I
