Mary Roberts Rinehart Fullscreen The door (1930)

Was she exultant or depressed?

She may have been frightened.

Indeed, I think now that she was, for some time during that day she asked Katherine not to tell me she was there.

“Why?” Katherine asked.

“Miss Bell would be glad to know that you are in a good position.”

“She would think I had used what I know, to my own advantage.”

Katherine gave that faint cold smile of hers, and the girl flushed.

But in the end she agreed to say nothing, for a time at least.

“Of course, when Miss Judy comes back—” she said.

“It may be all right then,” Mary said quietly, and turned back to her machine.

Incomprehensible, that girl, now as I look back; hiding as definitely and more safely than Jim was hiding.

She never gave even Katherine the address of her room downtown.

She must have felt safe too for the first time, for on that night, as we know now, the night of the day she was engaged, she walked out on the Brooklyn Bridge and dropped something into the water.

She had not tied a string around it, and as it fell the paper blew away.

Then she walked uptown to a branch post office, bought a stamped envelope and sent a note to Wallie.

Not giving him her address; just a line or two.

After that she went to her room and “slept very well.”

Anyhow there she was, established, settled in that handsome Park Avenue apartment where a dozen servants moved quietly about in the early hours of the day, later on to disappear and only emerge on the ringing of bells or the ritual of the table.

What she felt I have no idea.

She adapted herself, I fancy.

She had learned a good bit while with me.

But she was there for a definite purpose.

That over she moved on.

Vanished.

A queer girl, I think now; not entirely explicable, even by the light of what we now know.

I settled down, then, to the hushed routine of a house in mourning.

Katherine did not appear.

People called, spoke in low voices, went away.

Flowers began to arrive, and Mary entered the names of the senders, neatly in a small book.

She was to stay there at night now, until after the funeral.

I thought she looked changed, not so pretty and rather worn.

Once, carrying some cards into her room to be entered, I found her with her head on her desk, and I thought that she was crying.

But she was not crying.

Her eyes were defiant and rather hard.

I had not the faintest idea that there was any mystery about Howard’s death until I talked to Judy.

Then I was fairly stunned.

And as the apartment itself figures in that story of hers, I must begin by describing it.

It is of the duplex type; on the lower floor are the large drawing room, a small living room, a library, and Katherine’s study.

Behind these, along a corridor, lie the long dining room, the pantry, kitchen and servants’ rooms, and above, connecting by a front and rear staircase, are the family rooms; Katherine’s boudoir connecting with her bedroom, Howard’s study opening from his. Judy’s room, guest chambers, a room for Katherine’s maid and a small sewing and pressing room opening from it, constitute the remainder of that floor.

On that Tuesday evening, then, Judy met Mary in the lower hall preparing to go.

Judy was resentful of her presence in the house and inclined to be short with her, but Mary detained her.

“I don’t think your father ought to be alone at night,” she said.

Judy eyed her.

“And why?”

“Because he’s a very sick man.

If he—if he should take sick in the night, he mightn’t be able to call for help.”

“We have no intention of neglecting him,” said Judy shortly, and turned away.

But she was worried nevertheless, and she spent that evening with Howard in the study off his bedroom.

He had a heavy cold and was rather uncomfortable.

Mostly he read, and when at eleven o’clock Evans, his valet, brought the highball and placed it beside the bed in the bedroom, she prepared to leave him.