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"I don't know. All right. They keep on searching the house. What are they looking for?"
"I've no idea."
"We're all getting very nervy. Come as soon as you can. I shall go crazy if I can't talk to someone."
I said I would come down straightaway.
There was no one in sight as I drove up to the front door. I paid the taxi and it drove away. I felt uncertain whether to ring the bell or to walk in. The front door was open.
As I stood there, hesitating, I heard a slight sound behind me. I turned my head sharply. Josephine, her face partially obscured by a very large apple, was standing in the opening of the yew hedge looking at me.
As I turned my head, she turned away.
"Hullo, Josephine."
She did not answer, but disappeared behind the hedge. I crossed the drive and followed her. She was seated on the uncomfortable rustic bench by the goldfish pond swinging her legs to and fro and biting into her apple. Above its rosy circumference her eyes regarded me sombrely and with what I could not but feel was hostility.
"I've come down again, Josephine," I said.
It was a feeble opening, but I found Josephine's silence and her unblinking gaze, rather unnerving.
With excellent strategic sense, she still did not reply.
"Is that a good apple?" I asked.
This time Josephine did condescend to reply. Her reply consisted of one word.
"Woolly."
"A pity," I said. "I don't like woolly apples."
Josephine replied scornfully:
"Nobody does."
"Why wouldn't you speak to me when I said hullo?"
"I didn't want to."
"Why not?"
Josephine removed the apple from her face to assist in the clearness of her denunciation.
"You went and sneaked to the police," she said.
"Oh," I was rather taken aback. "You mean - about -"
"About Uncle Roger."
"But it's all right, Josephine," I assured her. "Quite all right. They know he didn't do anything wrong - I mean, he hadn't embezzled any money or anything of that kind."
Josephine threw me an exasperated glance.
"How stupid you are."
"I'm sorry."
"I wasn't worrying about Uncle Roger. It's simply that that's not the way to do detective work. Don't you know that you never tell the police until the very end?"
"Oh I see," I said. "I'm sorry, Josephine. I'm really very sorry."
"So you should be." She added reproachfully, "I trusted you."
I said I was sorry for the third time.
Josephine appeared a little mollified. She took another couple of bites of apple.
"But the police would have been bound to find out about all this," I said. "You - I - we couldn't have kept it a secret."
"You mean because he's going bankrupt?"
As usual Josephine was well informed.
"I suppose it will come to that."
"They're going to talk about it tonight," said Josephine. "Father and Mother and Uncle Roger and Aunt Edith. Aunt Edith would give him her money - only she hasn't got it yet - but I don't think father will. He says if Roger has got in a jam he's only got himself to blame and what's the good of throwing good money after bad, and mother won't hear of giving him any because she wants father to put up the money for Edith Thompson. Do you know Edith Thompson? She was married, but she didn't like her husband. She was in love with a young man called Bywaters who came off a ship and he went down a different street after the theatre and stabbed him in the back."
I marvelled once more at the range and completeness of Josephine's knowledge; and also at the dramatic sense which, only slightly obscured by hazy pronouns, had presented all the salient facts in a nutshell.
"It sounds all right," said Josephine, "but I don't suppose the play will be like that at all. It will be like Jezebel again."
She sighed. "I wish I knew why the dogs wouldn't eat the palms of her hands."
"Josephine," I said. "You told me that you were almost sure who the murderer was?"
"Well?"
"Who is it?"
She gave me a look of scorn.
"I see," I said. "Not till the last chapter? Not even if I promise not to tell Inspector Taverner?"
"I want just a few more clues," said Josephine.
"Anyway," she added, throwing the core of the apple into the goldfish pool, "I wouldn't tell you. If you're anyone, you're Watson."
I stomached this insult.
