Look at you yourself; you burn that carpet, and produce evidence against Jim Blake that to the average jury is enough to send him to the chair!
Why did you burn it?
What did you find that we’d overlooked?
I’d been over that carpet with a fine tooth comb.”
“And there was no oil on it?”
“Oil!
You found oil on that carpet?”
“I did indeed.
A ring of oil.”
He got up and reached for his hat.
“It may interest you to know,” he said, “that there was no oil on that carpet when I examined it, the morning after Florence Gunther’s murder.”
But whatever conclusion he drew from that, his last speech that night was small comfort to me.
“Well, I don’t see how that will help with a jury,” he said, rather heavily.
“On the surface it’s a water-tight case, Miss Bell.
He had the weapon and the motive.
The only thing he didn’t have—and you’ll have to excuse the word—was the guts.
Mind you,” he added, “I’m not saying that Blake is innocent.
He looks as guilty as hell.
But I am saying that there are discrepancies, and I’ve got to have an explanation of some of them.”
Chapter Nineteen
THAT WAS ON WEDNESDAY the eighteenth, a month after Sarah’s death and about six weeks before Joseph was shot.
I went upstairs that night exhausted both mentally and physically, to find Judy curled on my bed and very despondent.
“Let me stay awhile,” she pleaded.
“Until mother comes in, anyhow.
I want to talk.”
“I didn’t know she had gone out,” I said in surprise.
“She took Robert and the car.
I think she went to Uncle Jim’s. To Pine Street.”
That surprised me, but Judy explained that it was to select some clothing to be sent to the jail.
“Only why would it take her all this time—” she added, almost pettishly.
“I didn’t hear the car.”
“You’re a little deaf, you know, Elizabeth Jane.
I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot goes on that you don’t hear.
Or hear about.”
“What goes on that I don’t hear about?”
“You didn’t hear Elise scream last night.”
“I had taken a sleeping tablet,” I said with dignity.
“And what did Elise scream about?”
“She saw the ghost,” said Judy.
And when I came to examine that story, and to talk to Elise, I had to admit that she had seen something.
The Frenchwoman was still pale when I saw her.
It appears that she had wanted to tell me the story, but that Joseph had sternly ordered her to keep quiet.
Also that she was under no circumstances to tell the women servants, or she might “have the cooking and housework on her hands.”
That seems to have been sufficient, but she had told Judy, talking in her rapid gesticulating French.
But her story gained credibility by the fact that she spoke no English, although she had understood Joseph well enough.
She could have had no knowledge of the talk in the kitchen and servants’ hall, and indeed Joseph had told me later that he had warned both women to keep their mouths closed over the whole business.
Her story, punctuated by dramatic pauses where Judy saw that my French was inadequate, was as follows:
She was occupying Mary Martin’s room, and the night as I have said was sultry and like midsummer. She went to bed leaving her door open, but the breeze was from the opposite side of the house.
She got up and opened the door across, thinking that it belonged to a room there.
It was, however, the door to the attic staircase which she had opened, and she was surprised to find not only the steps but that a faint light was going somewhere above.