“Why?”
“Because he went out that night to meet her.”
I think, recalling that interview, that he was deliberately telling me these things in order to get my reaction to them, to watch for those reactions.
Later on I believe he attempted to convey something of this system of his to the Grand Jury; that he said, in effect:
“You are to remember that guilt or innocence is not always solved or otherwise by the sworn statements of witnesses.
People have perjured themselves before this.
The reaction to a question is an important one; there is a subtle difference between the honest man and the most subtle liar.”
So now he watched me.
“Did you know, when she left your house that night, that she was going out to meet Mr. Blake?”
“No.
And I don’t believe it now.”
“You saw the writing on her cuff.
Was that hers?”
“It looked like it.
I daresay it was.”
“Yet no such envelope was found in her room the next day, when the police searched it.
Nor among the trash which Inspector Harrison examined.
She wrote and sent that letter, Miss Bell, and he received it.
Unless some one in your house found it and deliberately destroyed it.”
“If you think I did that, I did not.”
“No,” he said. “I am sure you did not.
That is why I know he got it.
But why should he deny it?
Remember, I am bringing no accusation against Mr. Blake, but I want him to come clean on this story.
He knows something. You might suggest to him that it would be better for him to tell what he knows than to have us find it out for ourselves.”
I was slightly dazed as I left, and sitting back in the car I was puzzled.
How little, after all, we know of people!
Sarah, moving quietly about my house, massaging me each morning with quiet efficiency; her life an open book, not too interesting. And yet Sarah had had a secret, a secret which she had withheld from me and had given or tried to give to Jim Blake.
I decided to see Jim at once and give him the District Attorney’s message.
But Jim had had a return of his old trouble and was in bed.
And as it happened, something occurred that night which took my mind away from Jim for the time, and from everything else except Judy.
She had been in a fever of anger and resentment ever since Sarah’s death.
After all, Sarah had helped to bring her into the world, and she was outraged.
I daresay under other conditions I might have found her determination to solve a crime amusing rather than otherwise, but there was a set to her small jaw, a feverish look in her eyes, that commanded my respect.
And in the end, like Katherine, she did make her small contribution.
To Dick of course she was wonderful, no matter what she did.
So she and Dick were working on the case; she in a fury of indignation, Dick largely because of her.
I know that they had gone over every inch of the lot where the dogs had been tied, but that they had found nothing.
I think, however, that they were afraid I could not give their efforts sympathetic attention, for except for their lack of success they did not confide in me.
On that night, Wednesday, they had been making a sketch of the lot and the park, but Judy looked very tired, and at ten o’clock I sent Dick away.
Judy started up for bed, but in the hall she must have thought of something and changed her mind. She went back through the pantry, where Joseph was reading the evening paper, and asked if he had a flashlight.
Joseph had none there, and she went into the kitchen, got some matches and the garage key from its nail and proceeded to the garage.
Shortly after she came back to the kitchen door and called in to him:
“Where’s the ladder, Joseph?
The ladder Mr. Walter used in the lavatory that night?”
“It’s in the tool room, Miss Judy.
Shall I bring it in?”
“Never mind,” she said, and went out again.
At half past ten I heard him making his round of the windows and doors, before going to bed.
At the front door he stopped, and then came to me in the library.