Page:That Royle Girl (Balmer).pdf/272

 "He ran into the door upstairs in my flat, I tell you!"

"Was your father in the flat at the time?"

"No; yes!" she cried, answering truthfully at first, because for the last few minutes she had been able to tell the truth; but immediately she remembered the prepared story of Dads' presence upstairs.

"Which do you mean—no or yes?" Calvin challenged.

"Yes," replied Joan Daisy, gasping in dread that she was losing her grip upon herself.

"Your father was in your flat when you and Ketlar came upstairs from his flat?"

"No; but my father came in immediately afterwards."

"He saw Ketlar?"

"Of course."

"And spoke with him?"

"Yes."

"When Officers Denson and Goudy questioned you, did they ask you these questions and did you make these replies? Question: 'He'—meaning your father—'saw Ketlar here with you?' Answer: 'No.' Question: 'How was that?' Answer: 'My father doesn't like him. I had to hide him for a few moments.

"I can't remember what I may have said in my dazed mental condition after the police waked me up and accused me of having part in a murder of which I knew nothing until they told me." Joan Daisy repeated the answer ordered by Mr. Elmen for such an emergency.

And this reply Calvin met again and again as he produced the police questions and the girl's own answers to prove that she had elaborated two contradictory accounts of her own and Ketlar's actions upon that night. But upon one point she clung, and he could not shake her; Ketlar had been with her in her flat when the radio brought "Home, Sweet Home" from Los Angeles; and it was during that song, so the State itself had shown,