“Thank you, you have been very good to come,” and then turned and went out.
I did not see her again until dinner.
During the afternoon however, I heard Judy telephoning Wallie, and he came at six o’clock.
From six until almost seven he was closeted with Katherine in her room, and the very fact that their voices were never raised seemed to me an indication of the tenseness of that meeting.
There was no compromise in either of them.
Only suspicion and jealousy on Katherine’s part, and a fury of hatred and revenge in Wallie.
I know now that a little gentleness, some remorse for that tragic youth of his, and he would have weakened.
But poor Katherine was as she was; she made no play for sympathy.
She sat perfectly still and interrogated him.
“You refuse to say what this secret fund was for?
Or for whom?”
“Absolutely.”
“You know what you are doing, of course.
You are allowing your father’s memory to be besmirched.
For I warn you I shall take this will into court.”
“Then it will be you who are doing the soiling,” he said, and stood turning the ring around his finger.
Just before seven he went down the stairs and out the front door.
I was sitting in the library, but he did not turn his head.
In the meantime other things were happening of which we had no knowledge at the time.
We knew of course that Mr. Henderson had been to the District Attorney, and that the police had learned that the two murdered women had been the witnesses to the second will.
But we knew nothing of the activities of the night watchman in New York, Charles Parrott.
He was shrewd enough, this Parrott, but even a stupid man might have been suspicious.
Here was Howard receiving a secret visitor at two in the morning, a man who ducked in past him, with his cap drawn down over his head, a large ulster overcoat and a muffler about the lower part of his face.
And in the morning Howard was dead.
That apparently roused no suspicion in itself.
But two things followed it.
One was that fatal attempt of Mary Martin’s to bribe him to say nothing of the night visitor.
That had failed, and so she had vanished.
Then there was that early morning search of mine.
He was still on duty, and the sight of a woman of my age wandering in that courtyard in the rain and carefully inspecting the ground must have been unusual, to say the least.
And then came that fatal move by Dick Carter the day of the funeral.
“Which one is it?” Parrott had asked.
“Dark coat and striped trousers,” said Dick.
“Well, he’s the same build.
I didn’t see much of his face.”
He read the papers, and he knew Sarah Gittings; knew about her murder too, and Florence’s, the
“Shoe” murders.
He went to Evans, the valet, a day or so later.
“Did you see Mr. Somers when he died?
I mean before he’d been moved?”
“I did,” said Evans with dignity.
“How about his feet?
Did he have anything on them?”
“I believe he was in his stockings,” said Evans, and through the simple and fortuitous circumstance that poor Howard had dropped his slippers before he picked up his highball, Parrott went to the police!
The rest is shrouded in mystery.
Some time toward the end of that week a lieutenant from the homicide squad in New York took a train and saw Inspector Harrison and the District Attorney.
On Monday an order was obtained to disinter Howard’s body, and a secret examination made.
Nothing was given out, even Katherine did not know.
But it was discovered that Howard Somers had died, not of an acute heart attack, but of cyanide of potassium, “probably administered in whisky.”
Cyanide of potassium!