You
understand?"
Joe came out of the cinema world long enough to nod his head in emphatic
understanding of the instructions. In his own room Crewe pulled out his
notebook and once more gave himself up to the study of the baffling
Riversbrook mystery, in the new light of Gabrielle's confession.
Part of her story, he reflected, must be true. She had produced Sir
Horace's revolver, and, still more important, a handkerchief which he had
clutched in his dying struggles. It was obvious that she or some other
woman had been at Riversbrook the night of the murder, and in the room
with the murdered man before he died. That tallied with Birchill's
statement to Hill that he had seen a woman close the front door and walk
along the garden path while he was hiding in the garden. Crewe, recalling
Gabrielle's description of the room, came to the conclusion that it was
probably she who had been with the judge in his dying moments. No one but
a person who had actually seen it could have described the room with such
minuteness.
She had been in the room, then. For what object? For the reasons stated
in her confession? Crewe shook his head doubtfully.
"She evaded the trap about the pocket-book, but she made one bad
mistake," he mused.
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