Miss Judy had sat with him until after eleven.
At eleven Evans, his valet, had brought a whisky and soda and placed it in his bedroom, and a short time after that Judy had gone to bed.
Katherine had found him in the morning, in his dressing gown and slippers, lying across the bed as he had fallen.
I took the eleven o’clock train and was at the apartment at something after two that afternoon.
Mary was in the hall when I was admitted, her red head flaming over her decorous black frock.
She was talking competently and quietly with what I gathered was an undertaker’s assistant, and she greeted me with considerable manner.
“Mrs. Somers is trying to get some rest,” she said.
“Have you lunched, or shall I order something for you?”
“I have lunched, Mary.
When did it happen?”
“The doctors think between three and four this morning.
It was his heart.”
“Then there will be no inquest?”
“Inquest?”
I thought she looked at me strangely, as though I had shocked her.
“No.
It was not unexpected.”
She went on, as she led me to my room.
The doctors had not been surprised.
He had died very quietly, that was one comforting thing.
And she had notified the family. She had called up Mr. Blake, and had telegraphed Laura.
Also—she hoped this was all right—she had sent a wire to Mr. Walter.
“Why not?” I said rather sharply.
“He is his son.
And is Mr. Blake coming?”
“He will try to be here for the funeral.”
Judy was shut away with Katherine, who seemed to be dazed and entirely unprepared.
In my room I had time to think.
Mary was there, apparently at home; and as Judy had predicted, Maude Palmer was gone.
She had worked fast, I reflected, had Mary Martin.
She had been out of my house less than a week, and there she was.
I know now what happened, how it came about.
Katherine has told me.
On the Friday before Mary had called at the apartment and asked for Katherine. Katherine was dictating letters in that small room off the great drawing room which she likes to call her study.
She went out and Mary was waiting in the hall, soft voiced and assured.
Within the next half hour she had told her things we had never dreamed she knew, about the sword-cane, for example, and Jim’s refusal to alibi himself the night of Sarah’s murder.
She knew—or guessed—that he was not ill but hiding, and then, bending forward and speaking cautiously, she told her that the carpet was missing from Jim’s car.
Katherine was stunned.
“How do you know that?” she demanded sharply.
“Amos, I suppose.”
“Partly Amos.
Partly my own eyes.
Miss Bell tried to burn it, but it didn’t burn.
When I went down to breakfast the cook told me the poker was missing, and I found it in the cellar.
So I looked about, and the carpet was there.
It was in the furnace.”
“You’d swear to that?”
“Not necessarily,” said Mary, and sat waiting for Katherine to comprehend that.
Within an hour Katherine had dismissed poor Maude Palmer, who had been her secretary for five years, giving her two months’ salary in advance, and the next morning Mary Martin was threading a new ribbon into the machine in that small neat room where Katherine attended to the various duties of a woman of wealth and position.
What were her thoughts as she sat there?