Page:That Royle Girl (Balmer).pdf/41

 guilty of this. He might have got in a fight with the man whom she had seen with Adele; and Ket might have seriously hurt him. Indeed, Joan had run downstairs fearing that Ket perhaps had done something of the sort; but she rejected utterly the idea that he could have shot Adele.

Joan believed that he could not have done it even accidentally; nor could he have been so much as a witness to it. She was sure that he could not have known that his wife had been killed when he had come to her own door and kissed her.

"Now you give me your story of what went on tonight," Cummins bid her quickly, as though regretting that he had granted her the few seconds to think.

"You mean, here?" she asked.

"Or anywhere else you went," he replied, blandly.

"We didn't go anywhere else," she answered, instantly; and since she meant "we" together, it was literally true. But she realized that she must be ready to lie for Ket.

Through the doors between her and Ket and the uniformed man in Ket's bedroom, the booming voice resounded dully as it plied its questions.

"Then tell me what you did do here," Cummins commanded; and she comprehended that, in the other room, the booming voice was making its separate inquisition. She knew that, if she was to help Ket, her story and his must agree; and the one sure way to make them agree was for both to tell the truth. But what had Ket cried to her in the last moment before they separated him and her for this questioning? "She's been with me since I got home just after twelve!" This was not true; but this must be what he had told the police, before she ran downstairs; this, he must be maintaining in his answers which barely reached her as sounds between the rasps of the booming voice.