Joseph gets shot, and he’s passing by the house.”
“Really, Judy!”
“I’m going to get rid of this if it kills me.
Uncle Jim gets sick, and who is in and out of his house day and night?
Simonds.
It’s like that nursery rhyme about the warm cot, only the answer isn’t mother. It’s Doctor Simonds.
He could get into the garage and put that oil on the carpet of the car, and so bring Uncle Jim into it.
And he’s got a car of his own and drives like the devil.
“How do we know he didn’t go to New York that night and see father?
And he’s tall and rather thin, and he’s got evening clothes and wears them.
What I’d like to know,” she went on, her voice raised and her color high, “is where Doctor Simonds comes in in all this.
We’ve been taking his word right along, but how do we know he isn’t lying?”
“A reputable doctor—” I began.
“Oh, I’m sick of reputable doctors and reputable lawyers.
I don’t trust any one any more.
How do we know those two didn’t get together, Mr. Waite and Doctor Simonds, and cook this thing up with Wallie?
Doctor Simonds dopes father, and Mr. Waite draws the will.
And Sarah’s suspicious.
She puts on the record that father was queer that day.”
“And so your Uncle Jim saw him that night on the hillside after he had killed poor Sarah, and is willing to be tried for his life to protect him?
Don’t be silly.
Are you intimating also that Doctor Simonds did away with Wallie and shot Joseph?”
“Why not?” she said more calmly.
“Wallie was coming out with the whole story on the stand, so he had to be got out of the way.
And Joseph knew something, or suspected somebody, so he was shot.
And don’t forget this. He meant to kill Joseph.
That was the big idea.”
“I don’t believe it.
Doctor Simonds has attended me for years, and—”
She made an impatient gesture.
“Why is it,” she demanded, “that all women over a certain age have a soft spot for their doctors?
Doctors are human.
I’m asking you to think, not to be sentimental.
Wallie knows the question will come up of undue influence, or of father not being capable of making a will.
So what do they do?
Doctor Simonds writes him a note, that father is perfectly capable of making a will.
And whose word have we that the two were as reconciled during that sickness as Wallie pretends?
Doctor Simonds again!
You never heard Sarah say so, did you?”
“She never talked.
And she didn’t like Wallie.”
“Then again, come down to the night Joseph was shot.
Who could walk into this house without suspicion?
Suppose we’d happened in before he got Joseph?
Would we have suspected him of anything?
No!
He’d have said he saw the door open and dropped in, or that he wanted to use the telephone, and you’d have given him a glass of the sherry he likes so much and thought nothing of it.”
“Why would he have come in the back door?”
“How do we know he came in the back door?
Why didn’t he come in the front, take a glass of wine, and then wander back.