“You left it when you untied the dogs and went back for Joseph?”
“I left it by the tree.”
“And when you got back it was not there?”
“No. We searched for it as well as we could.
But a rope doesn’t move itself, and it was not where I left it, or anywhere nearby.”
He got up to go, and standing in the hallway stared back at the lavatory door.
“This Florence,” he said, “she may try to get in touch with you.
She reads the papers, and God knows they are full of it today.
If she does, don’t scare her off.
Find out something.
Coax her here if you can, and notify me.”
He went back into the lavatory and stood looking up at the ceiling.
“A strong man,” he said, “or a desperate one if he got himself out of that shaft, and he may have; and it took strength to put that body where we found it.”
As an afterthought, on his way out, he turned and said:
“Strange thing.
Both those stab wounds were exactly the same depth, four and a quarter inches.”
Wallie and Jim had made the necessary identification, and the coroner’s jury brought in the only verdict possible.
After that and pending the funeral we had a brief respite, although hardly to be called a peace.
Reporters rang the bell day and night, and the press published sensational stories, including photographs of the house.
Camera men even lurked in the shrubbery, trying for snapshots of any of us.
One they did get, of Judy.
They had caught her unawares with a cigarette in her hand, and to prevent the picture she had made a really shocking face at the camera.
They published it, nevertheless, and Katherine was outraged.
Katherine came down to the funeral. She was shocked and incredulous over the whole affair.
“But why?” she repeated over and over, when we got back from the service.
“She had no enemies.
She really had nobody, but us.”
“Is there anything phony about any of us?” Judy inquired.
“Some family secret, or something she knew?”
“Judy!” said Katherine indignantly.
“But I mean it, mother.
If we’re all she’s had for twenty years—”
Fortunately for Judy, Jim Blake came in just then, and I sent upstairs for Mary Martin, who had been left to herself for several days, and ordered tea.
It seemed to me that we needed it.
We were five, then, that afternoon after Sarah’s funeral when we gathered around the tea table; Katherine in her handsome black, the large square emerald which was Howard’s latest gift to her on one white slim hand, saddened but controlled; Judy, with her boyish head and her girlish body; Mary, red-headed, pretty, not too sure of herself and resentful of it—it was clear that Katherine rather daunted her; Jim, well valeted and showing in relaxation some slight evidence of too many dinners and too many cocktails; and myself.
Katherine inspected Jim critically as he came in.
“You look tired, Jim.”
“Well, it’s been an uneasy week,” he said evasively.
But she could not let it rest at that.
Everything attached to Sarah had grown enormous in her eyes; already she was exalting Sarah in her mind, her virtues, her grievances.
“I didn’t suppose you’d bother much.
You never liked her.”
“My dear girl! I hardly knew her.”
“You never liked her, Jim. That’s all I said. Although why you should dislike the poor dear I don’t know.”
It seemed to me that Jim looked annoyed. More than annoyed, indeed; alarmed. Also that Mary was staring at him with a rather singular intentness, and that Judy had noticed this.
There was no particular sympathy between the two girls.
Judy, assured, humorous and unself-conscious, was downright and frank to the shocking point, and her small artifices were as open as herself.
But there was nothing open about Mary Martin and very little that was natural, save the color of her hair.
“Her mind’s always on herself,” Judy had complained once.
“She poses her very fingers, if you know what I mean.