Sarah had been dead for three weeks, and Florence Gunther for ten days.
Apparently the police had found nothing whatever, and we ourselves had nothing but that cryptic cipher, which was not a cipher at all but a key.
I daresay I should have shown it to the police; but already I had done a reckless thing with the carpet and I was uneasy.
Then too the Inspector had ceased his almost daily visits, although I saw him once on the Larimer lot, poking about with a stick and the faithful Simmons trotting at his heels.
But he did not come to the house, and soon—on Wednesday morning, to be exact—I was to receive a message which made me forget it entirely for the time.
Howard Somers was dead.
Chapter Thirteen
SO FAR I AM aware that I have painted a small canvas of the family; only Judy, Wallie and myself, with a bit of Katherine.
As Laura was never involved, it is unnecessary to enlarge on her.
She remained in Kansas City, busy with her children, mildly regretful over Sarah but not actively grieved.
The one figure I have not touched is Howard Somers.
Perhaps this is because I never understood him particularly, never greatly liked him.
Katherine’s passion for him had always mystified me.
But Howard was to add his own contribution to our mystery, and that by the simple act of dying.
It was not unexpected, although Katherine had sturdily refused to accept it, or to face its possibility.
I fancy that there must have been times after that almost fatal attack the summer before when she was abroad, when he must have wanted to talk to her.
There are many things in the heart and mind of a man facing death which must long for expression.
But I know from Judy that her mother never let him speak.
It was as though, by admitting the fact, she would bring it closer.
“We really ought to paint the place at Southampton, before we go up next summer,” she would say.
And her eyes would defy him, dare him to intimate that there might be no next summer for him.
All this I was to learn from Judy later on, trying perplexedly to understand the situation among the three of them, and that strange silence of Howard’s about matters which concerned them all.
“Probably he wanted to tell her, poor darling,” she said.
“But how could he?
She wouldn’t let him.
It was like Wallie, only worse.
She wouldn’t speak about Wallie, you know.”
“Do you think he was seeing Wallie?”
She shrugged her shoulders.
“He must have been, but he never said anything.
He never even told her that Wallie had been with him when he took sick last summer.
I suppose he didn’t want to hurt her.”
And, without being aware of it, she had drawn a picture for me which was profoundly to affect my judgment later on; of the barrier Katherine had for years been erecting between Howard and his son, and of a relationship there perhaps closer than she imagined.
The two driven to meetings practically clandestine, and Wallie with Margaret’s charm, her eyes, much of her beauty, making his definite claim on his father’s affection.
A conversation I was to have with Doctor Simonds later on was to confirm this.
“Whatever their trouble had been,” he said, “they had patched it up.
Wallie was there every day.
For a night or two he slept there, in the suite.
Later on he relieved the nurse for a daily walk.
He was Johnny on the spot all through.”
He had insisted on knowing his father’s condition, and had gone rather pale when he learned it.
“How long?”
“A year. Two years.
Nobody can say.
It might even be longer.”
But that was some time later.
Howard had died on Tuesday night, or rather some time early on Wednesday morning.
A footman called me to the telephone, but it was, of all people in the world, Mary Martin who spoke to me.
“I am sorry to have bad news for you,” she began, and went on to tell me.
Mr. Somers had seemed fairly well during the evening.