Poppy, her head on my stomach, coughed. She banged her tail against the flagstones apologetically.

Iris reached across me to pat her. “Has she been rich for long?”

“Oh, no, Mrs. Wilberframe passed on only a few weeks ago.” Miss Crump paused. “And it has been a great responsibility for me.” She paused again and then blurted: “You’re my friends, aren’t you? Oh, I am sure you are. Please, please, won’t you help me? I am all alone and I am so frightened.”

“Frightened?” I looked up and, sure enough, her little bird face was peaked with fear.

“For Poppy.” Miss Crump leaned forward. “Oh, Lieutenant, it is like a nightmare. Because I know. I just know they are trying to murder her!”

“They?” Iris sat up straight.

“Mrs. Wilberframe’s nephew and his wife. From Ogden Bluffs, Utah.”

“You mentioned them when you opened the door.”

“I mention them to everyone who comes to the house. You see, I do not know what they look like and I do not want them to think I am not on my guard.”

I watched her. She might have looked like a silly spinster with a bee in her bonnet. She didn’t. She looked nice and quite sane, only scared.

“Oh, they are not good people. Not at all. There is nothing they would not stoop to. Back in Glendale, I found pieces of meat in the front yard. Poisoned meat, I know. And on a lonely road, they shot at Poppy. Oh, the police laughed at me. A car backfiring, they said. But I know differently. I know they won’t stop till Poppy is dead.” She threw her little hands up to her face. “I ran away from them in Glendale. That is why I came to La Jolla. But they have caught up with us. I know. Oh, dear, poor Poppy who is so sweet without a nasty thought in her head.”

Poppy, hearing her name mentioned, smiled and panted.

“But this nephew and his wife from Ogden Bluffs, why should they want to murder her?” My wife’s eyes were gleaming with a detective enthusiasm I knew of old. “Are they after her money?”

“Of course,” said Miss Crump passionately. “It’s the will. The nephew is Mrs. Wilberframe’s only living relative, but she deliberately cut him off and I am sure I do not blame her. All the money goes to Poppy and—er—Poppy’s little ones.”

“Isn’t the nephew contesting a screwy will like that?” I asked.