I had first to explain matters to Miss Sharpe, and find out if she was willing to be confronted with the girl. She very rightly suggested that some legal witness should be present.”

“Do you wonder that I wanted help in a hurry?” Marion Sharpe said, turning to Robert. “Can you imagine a more nightmare piece of nonsense?”

“The girl’s story is certainly the oddest mixture of the factual and the absurd. I know that domestic help is scarce,” Robert said, “but would anyone hope to enlist a servant by forcibly detaining her, to say nothing of beating and starving her.”

“No normal person, of course,” Grant agreed, keeping his eye steadily fixed on Robert’s so that it had no tendency to slide over to Marion Sharpe. “But believe me in my first twelve months in the force I had come across a dozen things much more incredible. There is no end to the extravagances of human conduct.”

“I agree; but the extravagance is just as likely to be in the girl’s conduct. After all, the extravagance begins with her. She is the one who has been missing for—” He paused in question.

“A month,” Grant supplied.

“For a month; while there is no suggestion that the household at The Franchise has varied at all from its routine. Would it not be possible for Miss Sharpe to provide an alibi for the day in question?”

“No,” Marion Sharpe said. “The day, according to the Inspector, is the 28th of March. That is a long time ago, and our days here vary very little, if at all. It would be quite impossible for us to remember what we were doing on March the 28th—and most unlikely that anyone would remember for us.”

“Your maid?” Robert suggested. “Servants have ways of marking their domestic life that is often surprising.”

“We have no maid,” she said. “We find it difficult to keep one: The Franchise is so isolated.”

The moment threatened to become awkward and Robert hastened to break it.

“This girl—I don’t know her name, by the way.”

“Elisabeth Kane; known as Betty Kane.”

“Oh, yes; you did tell me. I’m sorry. This girl—may we know something about her? I take it that the police have investigated her before accepting so much of her story. Why guardians and not her parents, for instance?”

“She is a war orphan. She was evacuated to the Aylesbury district as a small child. She was an only child, and was billeted with the Wynns, who had a boy four years older. About twelve months later both parents were killed, in the same ‘incident,’ and the Wynns, who had always wanted a daughter and were very fond of the child, were glad to keep her. She looks on them as her parents, since she can hardly remember the real ones.”

“I see. And her record?”

“Excellent. A very quiet girl, by every account. Good at her school work but not brilliant. Has never been in any kind of trouble, in school or out of it. ‘Transparently truthful’ was the phrase her former mistress used about her.”

“When she eventually turned up at her home, after her absence, was there any evidence of the beatings she said she had been given?”

“Oh, yes. Very definitely. The Wynns’ own doctor saw her early next morning, and his statement is that she had been very extensively knocked about. Indeed, some of the bruises were still visible much later when she made her statement to us.”

“No history of epilepsy?”

“No; we considered that very early in the inquiry. I should like to say that the Wynns are very sensible people.