SO WE ENTERED INTO that period of dreadful waiting between the indictment and the trial.
Not that the waiting was to be long.
The prosecution was doing everything possible to get the case on the docket before court closed in June, and the press was urging haste.
On the twenty-fourth of May, Tuesday, Katherine moved into Jim’s house, and took Judy with her.
Apparently she paid no attention to the curious looks of the neighbors, or to the cars which halted in the street to survey the house.
She was like a woman set apart, not so much hardened as isolated.
As Laura wrote:
“She seems superhuman to me.
I’d come on if she wanted me, but quite frankly she doesn’t.
And what is this mysterious fund, anyhow?
Poor dear Howard leading a double life seems rather incredible, at his age and with that heart of his.
As for the rest of it, I don’t see why Wallie shouldn’t have his share.
No matter what you think about Margaret, she stood by Howard in the early days, and he was certainly crazy enough about her; although I wouldn’t care to tell Katherine that.”
She said she would be on for the trial, and to be sure to get the best men to defend Jim; and she ended by saying that the whole thing was preposterous, and that the Grand Jury must be insane.
“Collective insanity,” she put it.
Dick was rather at a loose end after the move.
There could be no informal dropping in at any house of Katherine’s.
Amos was gone, and a part of her own staff from New York had taken his place.
Just how they found houseroom I do not know, but somehow they managed.
Judy reported to me daily, and so matters went on for a week or so; Jim in jail, I alone once more in my house, and Katherine moving silently and austerely about that little house, sipping her after-dinner coffee in the back garden and passing, in order to reach it, the door to the liquor closet, and the passage to the cellar stairs.
Then one day Judy told me that her mother wished to see the manager of the Imperial Hotel, and wanted me to go with her.
“But why, Judy?”
“She didn’t say.
She thinks something must have happened here last summer; I know that.”
“The hotel wouldn’t know about it.”
“They might know if father had had any visitors.”
She glanced at me, then looked away.
I think she felt that there was something shameful in this prying into a dead man’s past, and that she had herself refused to go.
I agreed, however. It seemed the least I could do, although I do not frequent hotels. I had never been inside the Imperial in my life.
I daresay I belong to a generation which is absurd to the present one, but it has always seemed to me that well-bred folk should use hotels as necessities, not for pleasure.
But the hotel manager, a short ruddy man, swollen somewhat with good living, was unable to help us.
“I knew Mr. Somers well, of course,” he said, “and I gave him the suite he usually occupied.
I remember asking him if he wanted so much space, for he came alone. Usually he brought his valet.
He said he did, and I went up with him myself.
“I thought he looked tired, and I suggested he have dinner in his sitting room.
He said he would, and that his son would dine with him.
“The attack came on just after dinner.
I was in the lobby when the word came, and I went up. The hotel doctor was there, and we got Doctor Simonds also.
He—it looked pretty serious for a while.”
“Walter Somers was there when it occurred?”
“Yes.
He telephoned for help.”
As to visitors, he did not know.
The floor clerk might remember.
From her desk near the elevator she could see the doors of the suite clearly, and of course Mr. Somers was an important guest.
It was a chance, anyhow.
She had known Mr. Somers for years, and naturally his grave illness had been a matter of interest and solicitude.
A pleasant enough little man, if rather unctuous.
He took us to the sixth floor and left us with the floor clerk.
I imagine he had wanted to remain, but Katherine’s “thank you” was a dismissal. He turned and went away.