But she was still wide awake and tense when she heard it again. Or at least she heard a faint sound which was very like the creaking of the steps of a stairway. This time she reached the door softly and managed to open it without, she thought, being detected. And her care had its reward for she saw, coming very quietly from the landing of the stairs, the nurse. Rosina. She was wearing something long and dark and her face was hidden so that Susan saw only her thick, smooth black hair. But as she passed under the light she turned suddenly and cast a sharp strange look at Miriam Wiggenhorn’s door. A look so strange and pale and fiery, so full of malevolence, that Susan felt queer and shaken long after the nurse had glided away.

But there was no reason to suspect murder. She told Miriam Wiggenhorn that the next morning.

She did not add that there was something hidden, something secret and ugly, going on in the house. She said merely that she had thus far found no reason to suspect murder.

Miss Wiggenhorn took it with bland detachment and asked her, still blandly, to stay on a few days. She would welcome proof of Keller Wiggenhorn’s death being natural; she wanted Susan to have plenty of time. Susan said in that case she would like to see both the lawyer and the doctor and forestalled an offer on Miriam’s part to have them summoned. She would go to their offices, said Susan firmly, and Miriam embroidered a flower and then said Durrie would take her in his car.

It was then that Susan risked a direct question about the nurse. “I saw her last night coming very quietly up the stairway. What would she be doing on the first floor so late? Do you know?”

“How late?”

“I don’t know exactly. I suppose only around midnight.”

Miriam Wiggenhorn pondered very briefly and offered a—to her—sound explanation.

“I suppose she had gone down to the kitchen for a glass of milk,” she said. “Or for something to eat. I hope you aren’t going to involve little Rosina in this, Miss Dare.”

“But there’s only you and your brother and Rosina who had the opportunity,” said Susan brutally. “That is, if you except the cook and housemaid.”

“I suppose so,” said Miriam Wiggenhorn. “Well—I’ll ask Durrie to take you to see John. And the doctor.”

She did so. Durrie looked sullen but consented, and said, during the six-mile drive into Warrington, not one word.

And neither the doctor nor the lawyer yielded anything to Susan’s inquiries. Except that the lawyer again rather nervously put the responsibility for calling Susan upon Miriam’s plump shoulders.