TWENTY-EIGHTAfter another night, sleepless except for indeterminate stretches of time in which there was a vague sense of half-recognized calamity, Rietta Cray was paler than yesterday, but steadier—nerves taut and rigidly controlled. She opened the door to the Chief Constable and Superintendent Drake, and needed no reminder that this was an official visit. To the end of her life there would be nightmare moments when she would re-live that interview.
It was circumstance rather than detail which made the nightmare. They went into the dining-room, and Drake produced a notebook. Randal sat on one side of the table and she on the other. She had known him since she was ten years old. Lately, with Lenfold only five miles away, they had seen a good deal of one another, and the friendship of slow
