Certainly one of the most astounding things about our series of crimes—and perhaps about all baffling crimes—is the narrow margin by which, again and again, the solution evaded us.
Despite the extraordinary precautions taken by the criminal, on at least a half dozen occasions safety was a matter of seconds only.
One such incident was the sound outside Florence Gunther’s room, the night Judy and I were there.
Another, for example, was Clara’s failure to identify the figure in the pantry door.
Again, had the intruder on my staircase the night of Sarah’s murder happened to have crept a few steps lower, the entire situation would have been changed.
That I was resting when Florence came to see me resulted in her death before she had told her story.
There were others, also.
Had Judy turned that night in the garage she might have seen who it was who struck at her.
And Dick, deciding by the merest chance to retrace his steps around the wash, confronted that crouching figure and was violently flung into the gully.
These and a dozen other instances which I was to recall later, had given me an almost superstitious attitude toward the case.
Clearly it was not meant that we were to know until the deadly roster was complete, the whole sanguinary business finished.
Then, when it was all over, Katherine with her deadly pertinacity was to step in, and the door was to play its part.
The next incident was a fair example of the narrow margins to which I have referred.
I have said little about reporters, but of course life had been made miserable by them for weeks; masculine and feminine, they had more or less invaded us.
Dick’s injury had resulted in a fresh influx, and so I had instructed the servants to inspect all callers from the library bay window before opening the doors.
A day or two after the visit to Godfrey Lowell the bell rang and Joseph tiptoed upstairs to say that a suspicious looking woman was on the doorstep.
By that I knew he meant probably a reporter, but something made me ask what she looked like.
“A big woman,” he said. “Rather flashy, madam.”
“Humph,” I said.
“Big?
All the ladies of the press so far have been small, Joseph.
Small and young.”
The bell rang again, almost fiercely, and suddenly a curious thing happened to me.
I had a vision of Florence Gunther standing there, ringing the bell and being turned away.
It came and went while the bell was still ringing.
“Let her in, Joseph.
I’ll see her.”
He disapproved, I knew.
It was in every line of his back.
But in the end he admitted her, and it developed that my caller was Lily Sanderson.
She looked tired, I thought, too tired even to be self-conscious.
“I guess you have enough bother without my adding to it,” she said.
“But I had to come.
I had really.”
She sat down and put her hands to her hat.
“I guess I look something dreadful.
I’ve been losing a lot of sleep, and what with being on my feet all day—”
“Would you like some tea?”
“No, thanks.
I feel too mussy.
I want to get home and get my shoes off.
My feet swell something dreadful these days.
Not getting to bed properly, you know.”
“Can’t you slip them off now?
Your shoes?”
But the idea seemed to outrage her sense of the proprieties. She shook her head.
“I’ll just give you my message and be getting on.
It’s about Mrs. Bassett.
She’s sick.
She’s got—” She lowered her voice, as always will women of a certain age when mentioning cancer.