"Only to get you something to help you pull yourself together. I won't be a minute."
"No, no, don't! I simply can't bear it. He might come in at any moment!"
Patricia came back to her side but said sensibly: "Well, you must try to calm yourself. The inspector won't eat you. Don't you see that you're one of the first people he's bound to want to talk to? Honestly, there's nothing to be afraid of."
"Oh, I know, but when one's nerves have had a frightful shock, one simply isn't oneself. I really do feel as though I were going to be sick, or faint, or something."
At this moment Jim came into the room with a glass in his hand. Rosemary was rocking herself slightly, giving little dry sobs. He went to her and, putting his arm round her shoulders, held the glass to her lips. "It's only brandy— Come along!"
Her teeth chattered against the glass, but she swallowed the spirit and said chokingly: "Thanks. What does that awful man want with me?"
"He isn't awful. Quite human," Jim replied.
"There's something about policemen that makes one's inside turn upside down," said Rosemary. "I can't help it. I shall be all right in a minute."
"Have they found out anything, Jim?" asked Miss Allison in a low voice.
Over Rosemary's head his eyes met hers for a moment. "No. Not yet."
"What's going to happen?"
"I don't know. Looks like a nasty mess. Do you feel fit enough to see Inspector Carlton now, Rosemary?"
"As long as he doesn't expect me to think!" said Rosemary unpromisingly.
Jim went out again, and in a few minutes the inspector came into the room.
His initial speech of sympathy for the murdered man's widow and his apology for being obliged to disturb her at such a time did much to restore Rosemary's poise. She stopped rocking herself to and fro and achieving a wan smile explained that she was one of those excessively highly-strung people whose nerves were simply unequal to the task of bearing her up in the face of disaster.
The inspector said that he quite understood.
"Everything seems to be a blank," added Rosemary, passing a hand across her eyes.
"I am sure no one could be surprised that you should feel like that, madam. It must be a terrible shock. I understand you were not in the house when it happened."
"Thank God, no!" answered Rosemary with a strong shudder. "I think I should have gone quite, quite mad."
"Yes indeed, madam. I wonder if you would mind telling me just where you were at the time?"
"I think I must have been down by the lake. I went there—oh, at about three, I should think. Miss Allison saw me go, didn't you, Patricia?"
Miss Allison corroborated this and found herself favoured by the inspector with a long searching look.
"Miss Allison?" he said.
"Yes."
"You are Mrs. John Kane's secretary, I understand?"
"Yes."
"You were in the house at the time of the murder?"
"Yes. I was in the room next to this."
"Thank you," said the inspector, making an entry in his notebook. He glanced at Rosemary again. "Was anyone with you in the garden this afternoon, madam?"
"Oh yes!" replied Rosemary nervously. "A friend of ours called. I was sitting talking to him by the lake for quite some time."
"His name?" asked the inspector, pencil poised.
"Dermott—Mr. Trevor Dermott. A very old friend of ours."
The inspector looked up. "Is Mr. Dermott on the premises now?"
"No, oh no! He left some time ago. I mean, before I'd the least idea of this frightful thing having happened."
"Mr. Dermott did not, to your knowledge, see your husband this afternoon, madam?"
"No, I know he didn't. He never came up to the house at all. My husband had a business appointment, and I walked down the drive to meet Mr. Dermott. He simply left his car down the drive, and we sat by the lake till he had to go."
The inspector looked at her. "You were expecting Mr. Dermott this afternoon?"
"Well, yes, in a way I was. I mean, he said he might look me up today if he got back from town."
"I see." The inspector closed his notebook. "Had your husband, to your knowledge, any enemies, madam?"
Rosemary did not answer for a moment. Miss Allison watched her with misgiving. Rosemary raised her eyes to the inspector's face and said hesitantly: "I hardly know what to say. As a matter of fact, I do happen to know that he was having a good deal of trouble at the office with his partners. I don't really understand business—I simply don't pretend to—but I know his partners were absolutely set on doing something my husband wouldn't agree to."
"Mr. Clement Kane was, I understand, the senior partner in the firm?"
"Yes, he was; that's just it."
"You don't know of any private quarrel Mr. Kane may have had?"
"N-no," Rosemary answered. "Not exactly a quarrel. Of course, I know his great-aunt resented his inheriting all Silas Kane's property and loathed us being here, but they didn't quarrel. I simply hate having to tell you this, but I do feel it's my duty not to keep anything back. And actually it's no secret that his great-aunt hated Clement. Everyone knows that James Kane is the one she'd like to have here."
Miss Allison fixed her gaze upon the prospect outside and thought of all the painful ways there might be of killing Mrs. Clement Kane. Rosemary's voice flowed on, but at last the inspector went away, and Miss Allison was able to favour Rosemary with a pithy rйsumй of her own character as seen through the eyes of Mr. James Kane's affianced wife.
Her remarks, however, glanced off the armour of Rosemary's superb egotism. Rosemary was grieved to think that anyone could so misjudge the purity of her motives. She explained earnestly that she had gone through the familiar processes known to her as Asking Herself What She Ought to Do. Miss Allison, who knew that Rosemary's mysterious Self, so often appealed to, so invariably in agreement with Rosemary, was divinely guided, at this point abandoned the argument and left the room.
The inspector, meanwhile, encountering James Kane in the hall, had requested him to accompany him to the study, whence Clement's body had by this time been removed for the purpose of answering a few questions on his own movements during the course of the afternoon.
"You state that you were seated on the terrace in the company of the elder Mrs. Kane until about half-past three, when the shot was fired?"
"Yes," agreed Jim.
"When you left Mrs. Kane, where did you go, sir?"
"Up to her rooms on the first floor. She wanted her garden rug, and I went to ask her personal maid for it."
"I understand the maid was not in Mrs. Kane's rooms at the time?"
"No."
"So what did you do, sir?"
"I looked round for the rug but couldn't see it. I then came downstairs again and went into the garden hall, thinking it might be kept there."
"The garden hall? That is the room on the same side of the house as this?"
"Correct."
"With a way into the garden, I think?"
"Of course. I'll show you."
"You were, I think you said, in this garden room when you heard the shot fired?"
"I was, yes."
"Did you form any idea of the direction from which the sound came?"
"I thought it came from just outside."
"What did you do, sir?"
"I went out at once through the door onto the path that runs down the side of the house and looked round."
"And you saw no one, Mr. Kane?"
"Not a sign of anyone."
The inspector moved to the window and looked out. Then he drew his head in again. "You stated a little while ago that you went out immediately you heard the shot. If that is so, it seems very strange that you should not have caught a glimpse of anyone on this side of the house. There does not seem to be any room for doubt that your cousin was shot from the window."