"A certain statement has been made to me this morning.
This statement concerns you."
Phillipa raised her eyebrows very slightly.
"You told me, Mrs. Haymes, that this man, Rudi Scherz, was quite unknown to you?"
"Yes."
"That when you saw him there, dead, it was the first time you had set eyes on him.
Is that so?"
"Certainly.
I had never seen him before."
"You did not, for instance, have a conversation with him in the summerhouse of Little Paddocks?"
"In the summerhouse?"
He was almost sure he caught a note of fear in her voice.
"Yes, Mrs. Haymes."
"Who says so?"
"I am told that you had a conversation with this man, Rudi Scherz, and that he asked you where he could hide and you replied that you would show him, and that a time, a quarter-past six, was definitely mentioned.
It would be a quarter-past six, roughly, when Scherz would get here from the bus stop on the evening of the holdup."
There was a moment's silence.
Then Phillipa gave a short scornful laugh.
She looked amused.
"I don't know who told you that," she said.
"At least I can guess.
It's a very silly, clumsy story - spiteful, of course.
For some reason Mitzi dislikes me even more than she dislikes the rest of us."
"You deny it?"
"Of course it's not true...
I never met or saw Rudi Scherz in my life, and I was nowhere near the house that morning.
I was over here, working."
Inspector Craddock said very gently: "Which morning?"
There was a momentary pause. Her eyelids flickered.
"Every morning.
I'm here every morning.
I don't get away until one o'clock." She added scornfully:
"It's no good listening to what Mitzi tells you.
She tells lies all the time."
"And that's that," said Craddock when he was walking away with Sergeant Fletcher. "Two young women whose stories flatly contradict each other.
Which one am I to believe?"
"Everyone seems to agree that this foreign girl tells whoppers," said Fletcher.
"It's been my experience in dealing with aliens that lying comes more easy than truth telling.
Seems to be clear she's got a spite against this Mrs. Haymes."
"So, if you were me, you'd believe Mrs. Haymes?"
"Unless you've got reason to think otherwise, sir."
And Craddock hadn't, not really - only the remembrance of a pair of over-steady blue eyes and the glib enunciation of the words that morning.
For to the best of his recollection he hadn't said whether the interview in the summerhouse had taken place in the morning or the afternoon.
Still, Miss Blacklog, or if not Miss Blacklog, certainly Miss Bunner, might have mentioned the visit of the young foreigner who had come to cadge his fare back to Switzerland.
And Phillipa Haymes might have therefore assumed that the conversation was supposed to have taken place on that particular morning.
But Craddock still thought that there had been a note of fear in her voice as she asked:
'In the summerhouse?'
He decided to keep an open mind on the subject.
It was very pleasant in the Vicarage garden.
One of those sudden spells of autumn warmth had descended upon England. Inspector Craddock could never remember if it was St. Martin's or St. Luke's Summer, but he knew that it was very pleasant - and also very enervating.