Then I replied:
‘It’s a pocketbook.’
Then I shouted ‘whoa,’ leaped from my trusty steed and—”
It was then that Judy found the typed slip and drew it out.
“You won’t have to advertise.
Here’s her name; Florence Gunther.”
“Florence Gunther?” I said. “My God!”
It was then that Dick told her of the murder the night before.
He was as careful as he could be not to horrify her, but the bare facts were dreadful enough.
She went very pale, but she watched him steadily, and somehow I got the impression that he was telling her more than appeared on the surface, that between them there was some understanding, some secret theory against which they were checking these new facts.
“On the Warrenville road?
Then she was taken there in a car?”
“Presumably, yes.”
“Did anybody see the car?”
“The police are working on that.
Apparently not.”
“And you’ve checked up on—things?”
“They seem all right. Absolutely O. K.”
Still with this mysterious bond between them they took me out to where Dick had found the bag, and standing there he pointed out where he had found it; not near the pavement, but almost in the center of the street.
It had shown up plainly; at first he had thought it was a bird, and veered to avoid it.
Then he saw what it was.
“You might figure it like this,” he said.
“She’s coming again to see you.
She suspects something, and she’s got to tell it.
Now, there are two ways for that bag to have been where I found it.
Either she saw somebody and ducked out into the street; or she was in a car already, was shot while in the car, and the bag dropped out.
I think she was in a car.
You see there’s no blood,” he ended awkwardly.
Judy looked a little sick, but she spoke practically enough.
“Couldn’t he have shot her there, dragged her quickly into the shrubbery, and then got a car?
She must have been here at eight-thirty or so, and the body wasn’t found until after ten.”
Well, it was possible; but a careful search of the hedge, and the lilacs, forsythia and syringa bushes inside of it—some of them in leaf, for the spring had been early—revealed nothing whatever.
I find myself dwelling on that question of time, which Judy brought up. It puzzled the police for a long time, but now we know about it; the driving about, with that dead woman lolling on the seat; the decision to use the river, and the bridge crowded and no hope there; the purchase of oil at some remote spot, leaving the car and its grisly contents at a safe distance; and finally the Warrenville road and the sleeping farmhouse. And the sick cow.
The sick cow!
Everything safe, another perfect crime. And then, of all possible mischances, a sick cow.
Chapter Nine
THAT WAS ON MONDAY.
Tuesday morning, Jim being still in bed and incommunicado by the doctor’s orders, the District Attorney sent again for Amos, Jim’s servant, and terrified him into a number of damaging statements.
That early dinner of Jim’s, the fact that he had left the house immediately after it, and that he had carried the sword-stick, all of these came out.
And finally the frightened wretch told that the stick had disappeared.
That was enough, more than enough. After that Jim was under surveillance day and night, one of those apparently casual affairs, but sufficient to report his movements. He made no movements, however.
He lay in his bed, and if he knew the significance of the men who moved back and forward along Pine Street, or that his telephone and mail were both under espionage, he made no sign.
But, although suspicion was now directed at Jim, it was only suspicion.
On Tuesday night Inspector Harrison came again to see me.
I was growing to like the man.
He was to oppose me and all of us for a long time, but he was at least sturdily honest with me, and he was to try later on to be helpful.
He was very grave that night.
He sent Judy away, to her annoyance, closed the library door, and then turned to me.
“I came here tonight with a purpose, Miss Bell,” he said at last.
“I want you to think, and think hard.