“She’s got a cancer, and it’s too late to operate.
She’s living on morphia.
Her daughter’s there now, but I relieve her at night.
That is, I sleep on a sofa, and if she gets bad she calls me.”
But the point of the matter was this: after Mrs. Bassett had had morphia she would grow talkative, “what with the pain stopping, and anyhow I guess morphia does loosen the tongue.”
And Miss Sanderson would listen.
“It’s really awful,” she said.
“Me working all day and trying to sleep, and her talking on and on.
Sometimes she’ll say:
‘You’re not listening.’
And I’ll wake up and tell her I am.
But what I’m coming to, she’s talked a lot about Florence.
She’s got her on her mind.
And she knows something, Miss Bell.
She knows something about that murder.”
“What makes you think that?”
“She’s as much as said so.
The other night she called me in the middle of the night and told me to get somebody from headquarters; she wanted to make a statement about something.
So I got the telephone book, but I didn’t know what to look for, and then I heard her calling like a crazy woman.
I went in, and she was running her tongue over her lips—morphia makes them dry, you know—and looking at me with a queer sly look.
‘I haven’t anything to tell the police,’ she said.
‘It’s this stuff they give me.
I guess I was dreaming.’
But I didn’t believe her then and I don’t now.
She meant to tell the police something, and then she got frightened.”
“It might not have been about Florence, at that.”
“Listen!”
She leaned forward.
“I told you I heard two people in that room the night Florence was killed, didn’t I?
And that one of them was a woman and she was crying?
Well, why wasn’t that Mrs. Bassett?”
She sat back, having made her effect, and gazed at me triumphantly.
“Mind you,” she said. “I’m not saying she had anything to do with the murder.
She’s a decent sort of woman, and she’s had a hard time; roomers at the house, and going out to give body massage into the bargain.
She knows something, that’s all I say.
And I stick to it.”
“Would she talk to the police if they went there?”
“I doubt it.
She’s thought it over, and she’s made up her mind.
She’s afraid; afraid of somebody.”
She had, however, no more idea as to this somebody’s identity than I had.
She knew no more of Mrs. Bassett than the average roomer knows of her landlady.
She believed that there was a husband living, but she had never seen him.
The daughter had given up a good position to take care of her, she understood.
She rambled on while I thought.
Only one thing struck me as being significant in all this, and that was that Mrs. Bassett had given massage.
“What does she look like?” I asked.
“I mean, in build?
Is she tall?”
“She’s medium height, and stocky.