In the end Susan, still with a silent and sullen Durrie, returned to the Wiggenhorn house no wiser than when she had left. They approached it this time along an old drive leading to a porte-cochère at a side door. Through the shrubs Susan caught glimpses of the garden, and, once, of a kind of summer-house, except that it was much more substantial than most summer-houses are. Durrie caught her look and said: “My studio.”

“Studio? Oh, you paint, then?”

“Well, yes and no. I sort of dabble around at this and that.” He hesitated and then said suddenly: “Look here, Miss Dare, I don’t know what on earth’s got into Miriam. Uncle wasn’t murdered. Why, there’s no one who would want to murder Uncle. It’s a perfectly senseless notion. I wish—I wish you’d tell her so and leave.”

“And there was no outsiders in the house, anyway,” said Susan. “Except the nurse and—”

“Rosina don’t do it! That’s impossible. Why, she—she—I tell you she couldn’t have done it. She thought the world of Uncle. And he of her.”

“Will Rosina be leaving soon?”

“I suppose so. Just for a time. Until we can be married.”

“Oh—”

“Yes.”

“Did your uncle approve of your engagement?” asked Susan after a moment.

The reply was not what she expected.

“Yes,” said Durrie. “He thought it was fine. Here you are, Miss Dare.”

He opened the door for her. She lingered to watch as he walked around the car which he left standing in the drive and disappeared in the direction the summer-house.

Susan went thoughtfully into the hideous drawing-room. Rosina, immaculate in her white uniform, was there reading, and she lifted her fine eyes to give Susan one long, smoldering look. She was not disposed to be communicative.

Yes, she had liked Mr. Wiggenhorn very much. Yes, it was too bad he died alone; she felt very badly about that.

“But it takes them that way. It can’t be helped. But it wasn’t murder,” she added with sudden, vehement scorn. “If he was murdered, it was an absolutely perfect crime. So perfect that it fooled me and the doctor, and I’m not easily fooled.”

Susan was very thoughtful during a dreary, silent lunch. But it was not until late afternoon that, during a solitary, slow walk up and down the damp garden paths, one small phrase out of all the things that had been said to her began to emphasize itself. Was dispelled and returned. Began to assume rather curious proportions. Under its insistency she finally let her fancy go and built up, with that as a premise, a curious fabric of murder. Or rather it built itself up, queerly, almost instantly, with the most terrifying logic.

It couldn’t be. There were reasons why it couldn’t be.