“Then there was no post-mortem?”
“No.”
“I asked for her, but I suppose she won’t see me.”
“She’s not seeing any one, Wallie.
I haven’t seen her myself.”
“Does she know I’m here?” he insisted.
“I told her, yes.
Through the door.
She’s quite shut away, Wallie.”
But I did not tell him that I had urged her and had been refused.
It had seemed to me that death ought to wipe out old angers, old jealousies.
But she had been coldly stubborn, would not even unlock her door.
“I have no intention of seeing him, Elizabeth.
Do go away.”
“Shall I tell him you will see him later?
He seems to think it is important.”
“Nothing is important, and I never want to see him again.
Of course that was pure hysteria, but no man has ever understood a woman’s hysteria.
Mary Martin came in just then with a number of telegrams, but he did not so much as look at her.
She glanced at him, waited a moment, then put down the telegrams and went quietly away.
“Give her a little time, Wallie,” I begged him.
“No,” he said.
“She’s had her chance.
I’m through.”
His face had hardened.
It was as though he had come with some overture of peace, and the impulse had died as I looked at him.
He was standing in the big drawing room, with its tapestries, its famous paintings, its well-known collection of eighteenth century French furniture, and I saw him look around as if appraising it.
Then he smiled unpleasantly.
“She has good taste,” he said.
“Good taste but bad judgment.
I daresay I can see him?
After all, he was my father.”
I asked no one’s permission for that, and he had had about five minutes alone with Howard before he left.
Judy took him to the door and left him there.
It must have been five minutes of pure agony, knowing what we know now, but he came out quietly enough.
When he left I thought I saw Mary waiting in the hall, but she disappeared when she saw me.
She was staying for the night, working late in order to attend to all the details, and I could still hear her at her desk when at last I went up to bed.
But I did not sleep.
I had taken two cups of coffee, and my mind was racing like a mill stream.
The news that Jim Blake had been with Howard, that for all his pretended illness he had driven his car the night before to New York, arriving stealthily after that long distance call, had been a profound shock.
True, that might have been explicable. He was in great trouble. He might have felt the need of Howard, of some balanced judgment.
But suppose that the shock of his story had destroyed Howard?
Suppose he had died before Jim left?
Suppose the thud Judy had heard had been his body as it fell?
Then why had Jim slipped away like a thief in the night?
His own sister in a room beyond, with only her boudoir intervening, and he had not called her.
It seemed monstrous, inhuman.
Then of course Judy’s suspicions played their part.
We would probably never know the truth.
Unless we told Katherine the whole story she would never permit an examination of the body, and to tell her the story was to involve her own brother.