t she had been looking forward to for a long while.
I couldn't go myself, there being the shop to look after. So Mr. Hill and
Daphne went to the Zoo, and after they came home and had tea I took her
to the pictures while Mr. Hill minded the shop. It was not the
picture-palace next door, but the big one in High Street, where they were
showing 'East Lynne,' Then when we come home about ten o'clock we all
had supper and went to bed."

"And your husband didn't go out again?"

"No, sir. When I got up in the morning to bring him a cup of tea he was
still sound asleep."

"But might he not have gone out in the night while you were asleep?"

"No, sir. I'm a very light sleeper, and I wake at the least stir."

Mrs. Hill's story seemed to ring true enough, although she kept her eyes
fixed on her interrogator with a kind of frightened brightness. Inspector
Chippenfield looked at her in silence for a few seconds.

"So that's the whole truth, is it?" he said at length.

"Yes, sir," the woman earnestly assured him. "You can ask Mr. Hill and
he'll tell you the same thing."

Something reminiscent in Inspector Chippenfield's mind responded to this
sentence. He pondered over it for a moment, and then remembered that Hill
had applied the same phrase to his wife. Evidently there had been
collusion, a comparing of tales beforehand. The woman had been tutored by
her cunning scoundrel of a husband, but undoubtedly her tale was false.

"The whole truth?" said the inspector, again.

"Yes, sir," answered Mrs. Hill.

"Now, look here," said the police officer, in his sternest tones, as he
shook a warning finger at the little woman, "I know you are lying. I know
Hill didn't sleep in the house, that night. He was seen near Riversbrook
in the early part of the night and he was seen wandering about Covent
Garden after the murder had been committed. It is no use lying to me,
Mrs. Hill. If you want to save your husband from being arrested for this
murder you'll tell the truth. What time did he leave here that night?"

"I've already told you the truth, sir," replied the little woman. "He
didn't leave the place after he came back from the Zoo."

Inspector Chippenfield was puzzled. It seemed to him that Mrs. Hill was
a woman of weak character, and yet she stuck firmly to her story. Perhaps
Evans had made a mistake in identifying Hill as the man who had been
carried into his bar after being knocked down. Nothing was more common
than mistakes of i