“Where is that pencil, I’d like to look at it.”
I unlocked a drawer of my desk and took out the envelope.
“This been handled since?”
“I picked it up by the point,” Wallie told him.
“Sure it wasn’t there before?” to me.
“I think it is unlikely,” I said.
“The ceiling is glass and is regularly cleaned.
It would have been seen.”
He held it carefully by the eraser and examined it, whistling softly to himself.
Then he dropped it back into the envelope and put it into his pocket.
“Well, that’s that.
Now, as to Miss Gittings herself.
I suppose she had no lover?”
“Lover?”
I was shocked.
“She is nearly fifty.”
He seemed to be amused at that.
“Still, stranger things—” he said. “Perhaps not a lover.
Some man, probably younger, who might pretend to be interested for some ulterior purpose.
Say money.
There’s more of that than you might think.
I suppose she had saved something?”
“I don’t know.
A little, perhaps.”
He turned to Judy.
“You accepted that it was Miss Gittings you heard moving in her room.”
“Certainly.”
“Why?”
“It was her room.
And the dogs had not barked. They would bark at a stranger.”
“Oh!” he said, and took a fresh toothpick.
“That’s interesting.
So the dogs knew whoever it was!
Very interesting.”
He sat for a moment or two, apparently thinking. Then:
“I gather she had few or no outside contacts?”
“None whatever.”
“She never mentioned anybody named Florence?”
“Florence?
Not to me.”
He settled down in his chair. “It is a curious thing,” he said.
“We think we know all about certain individuals, and then something happens, the regular order is disturbed, and we find we know nothing at all.
Now let me tell you certain things about Sarah Gittings.
“She has been nervous for some time, two weeks or so.
She has eaten very little and slept less.
Sometimes she has walked the floor of her room at night for hours.
At least twice in that time she was called up by a girl named Florence, and made an appointment to meet her.
One of these was made yesterday morning at eleven o’clock.
The cook was trying to call the grocer and overheard her.
Unfortunately, the place of meeting had evidently been prearranged and was not mentioned.