"You came down a quarter of an hour later?"
"I did, when Miss Sylvia woke me," said Deborah; "she was frightened out of her seven senses, and couldn't get up at once. Yes--it was about twenty minutes after the hour we come down to see--It," and the woman, strong nerved as she was, shuddered.
"Humph," said the Inspector, "the assassin had time to escape."
"Begging your pardon, sir, them, or him, or her, or it as murdered master was below in the cellar when we saw the corp--not that it was what you'd call a corp then."
Deborah did so, and with such wealth of detail that even the hardened Inspector felt the creeps down his official back. There was something terribly merciless about this crime. The man had been bound like a sheep for the slaughter; his mouth had been sealed with the brooch so that he could not cry out, and then in the sight of his child and servant he had been slowly strangled by means of the copper wire which communicated with the cellar. One of the policemen brought up an auger which evidently had been used to bore the hole for the wire to pass through, for the fresh sawdust was still in its whorls. "Who does this belong to?" Prince asked Deborah.
"It's Bart's," said Deborah, staring; "he was using it along with other tools to make some deal boxes for master, who was going away. I expect it was found in the cellar in the tool-box, for Bart allays brought it in tidy-like after he'd done his work in the yard, weather being fine, of course," ended Deborah, sniffing.
"In bed like a decent man if he's to be my husband, which he is," said Miss Junk, tartly. "I told one of them idle bobbies to go and fetch him from Bloomsbury."
"One has gone," said another policeman. "Bart Tawsey isn't he?"
"Mr. Bartholemew Tawsey, if you please," said the servant, grandly. "I only hope he'll be here soon to protect me."
"You're quite safe," said Prince, dryly, whereat there was a smile on the faces of his underlings, for Deborah in her disordered dress and with her swollen, flushed, excited face was not comely. "But what about this brooch you say is the cause of it all?"
Deborah dropped with an air of fatigue. "If you kill me I can't talk of it now," she protested. "The brooch belonged to Mr. Paul Beecot."