days, and I answer them the other days. It's just an arrangement."
"Very sensible indeed. What were we saying?"
"I don't remember."
"I do. I mentioned a discrepancy. I wondered whether you would help me to understand. Possibly it is perfectly plain and straightforward, but I can't quite follow it. You remember the first time your husband fell out of the bedroom window?"
"Yes, of course I do, but I thought we said ..."
"Well, on that occasion, your husband was in the house with the boys, and you and Bella were at the inn. Is that correct?"
"Of course it is. You know it is."
"Very well. Now, your husband was hurt by the fall, I presume. Did you nurse him?"
"No. He wouldn't have us put about. He made light of the fall."
"I see. I obtained so little information about this part of the story from Bella's diary that I thought perhaps you might be able to enlarge on it for me."
"But this won't help to get the wicked woman hanged!"
"I'm afraid not, no. You see, the diary mentions the fall, and then Bella announces that she went to the house to see whether she could discover any explanation of it, but, most tantalisingly, she leaves out any account of this visit and merely reports, the next day, that your husband had decided to give up the house as too dangerous. He wasn't in the house when he made that decision, was he?"
"I can't remember whether he was or not."
"I deduced he could not have been, because she goes on, after a mention of other matters, to state that three gentlemen and two ladies interested in psychical research came to the house and asked to be shown over it. She then states that, as she felt sure your husband 'would have wished it'—indicating that he was not able to be consulted on the matter—she herself showed them over the house. You, I suppose, Mrs. Turney, would have been with your husband at the inn?"
"I suppose so. Yes, of course. But I feel so dim and hazy. You see, poor Tom being killed so soon after ..."
"Quite so. Yes, I see. So Bella had the house to herself except for those strangers?"
"Well, yes, she would have had, except for the boys, wouldn't she?"
"Well that's the point. Were the boys there then?"
"Well, unless she'd murdered them by that time."
"But she hadn't. You see, if, as we think, the boys pushed Mr. Turney out of the window—as we have agreed they must have done, haven't we? ..."
"Yes, I suppose we have, but ..."
"And if, when these ladies and gentlemen came to see the haunted house, they had no manifestations of any kind ..."
"Didn't they?"
"Apparently they did not. Well, what does that tell us about the boys?"
"But ..."
"I know. They couldn't have starved to death in two days. In fact, they were alive when Bella was arrested."
"I don't know what you're trying to get me to say," said Muriel. "I can't explain it, if that's what you mean. Either these people didn't come, or else Bella was lying. I don't see why we should have to believe what she put down in that diary."
"Curiously enough, neither do I," said Mrs. Bradley. Muriel looked at her. There was fear, unmistakable, on the shallow little face. Mrs. Bradley nodded, slowly and rhythmically, still keeping her eyes fixed on those of her victim. Muriel was like someone in contact with electricity—-writhing, yet unable to drag herself away.
"You know what caused the jury to fail to agree?" said Mrs. Bradley at last.
"Oh, I know everybody on our side blamed me," said Muriel, recovering herself a little. "But, after all, I wasn't any worse than that half-baked sailor. How could you expect he would be believed! You must have known that his boyhood would tell against him. Nobody likes evidence from criminals."
"No, I agree about that. I had weighed that up very carefully, I assure you, before I suggested that he should be sought for to give evidence at all at the trial."
"There's one thing I ought to ask you," said Muriel, abandoning the subject of Larry. "Do I have to go into that awful witness box again? Because I don't believe I can do it."
" Needs must, when the devil drives, I should imagine," said Mrs. Bradley, with brisk, assured unkindness. Muriel looked at her, puzzled and slightly annoyed by these extraordinary tactics.
"What did you mean about love being all on one side?" she enquired in a voice of mingled curiosity and alarm.