‘You have to say that, don’t you?’ said Julia. She was rather pale, but 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?’