What’s my normal procedure?”
“I should think you’d get out as fast as possible.”
“Absolutely.
But I don’t. I saunter into that library, in a full light, pour myself a glass of sherry, put down the glass and then take my departure.
And if you didn’t use cut glass sherry glasses I’d leave a decent fingerprint instead of what we have.
It’s too reckless to be normal!
Unless it’s a woman.”
At four o’clock that morning, unwilling to disturb the Inspector until later, I called Dick and asked him what he thought of it.
He was drowsy and only half awake.
“She was running up the drive, toward the house,” I said. “And she didn’t know what had happened.
She asked the officer.”
But I could hear him yawning over the telephone.
“Sorry,” he said.
“The old bean isn’t working very well.
Probably she knew a lot more than she was admitting.
Maybe she was running out, and when she heard your policeman she reversed the process.
It’s an old dodge, you know.”
I sat on the side of my bed, the telephone on my knee, and tried to think.
If that casual hypothesis of Dick’s was correct, then Mary Martin had shot Joseph.
It would have been easy enough.
She knew the house and the habits of all of us; that the two maids retired early, that Joseph sat reading until late in the pantry; if she had seen Judy and Dick and myself go out into the grounds, she knew that the lower floor outside of the pantry was unoccupied.
She had only to enter by the kitchen, fire her shot, and go forward, in order to escape.
But she had not escaped.
In the ten, perhaps fifteen minutes between my finding Joseph and the arrival of the police, she had had plenty of time, but she had not gone.
Had she been upstairs during that interval, on some mysterious errand of her own?
In Sarah’s room, perhaps, or Joseph’s, and then later on in the upper hall, peering over the banister and watching that influx of blue coats and muscular bodies; still later on stealing down the stairs, step by step. Sounds from the pantry, men talking, and Mary looking over her shoulder. Then the still open front door, a run for freedom, and the sound of a motorcycle stopping and escape cut off.
Had she turned in a panic, and started back toward the house? Or had she already planned the maneuver in case of necessity?
To believe that last was to believe her old in crime, infinitely cunning and desperate.
I had worked myself into a condition bordering on hysteria by seven in the morning, when I called up Inspector Harrison, but his very voice quieted me.
He was angry enough, however, when I had told him the story.
“The damned blockhead!” he exploded, referring to the policeman.
“I’ll break him for this.”
“He didn’t know.
She said she worked here.”
“She did, did she?
She’s a quick thinker.
But what was she doing there?”
“You don’t think she shot Joseph?”
“Well, I don’t think she’s the temperament to shoot Joseph and then go in and take a glass of wine.
No.”
I felt relieved.
I was not fond of Mary, but the picture I had drawn for myself during the night had revolted me.
“Then I’m glad I talked to you.
And by the way, Mrs. Bassett is dead.”
I told him of Lily Sanderson’s message, and he was silent for so long when I had finished that I thought we might have been disconnected.
“Hello,” I said.
“Central, I’ve—”
“I’m still here, Miss Bell, I’m sitting on a chair thinking what a damned fool I’ve been.
I don’t belong on the force.
I ought to be a paperhanger!”