The two men looked at each other.

“She had no gloves,” Jim said. “So how did she get in? Through a window? Pat Abbott found the door standing open, but Mrs. Wainwright had to open it; unlock it and open it. Don’t tell me she did all that and then wiped that knob clean.”

They went back over the place together. Jim had already dug the bullet out of the plaster in the wall, and the gun lay on a table. Hopper took it up and examined it. Then he looked at a memorandum in a notebook. “Tony Wainwright’s gun,” he said, looking at Jim. “Suppose she’s had it all along?”

“Maybe. If she killed herself.”

“Or if Tony did it.”

“Look here,” Jim said angrily, “if you think Tony shot his mother you’re off your head. He was crazy about her. If you’d been here tonight when he saw her you’d know better.”

“Then who killed her, and why?”

“The same guy who killed Morgan,” said Jim, and Hopper laughed softly.

There was not much more that early morning. The coroner placed the hour of Maud’s death between eleven and twelve the night before, although it might have been somewhat later. The open door and the cold night might have brought on rigor mortis earlier. The footprints Jim had seen in the snow had disappeared with the snow itself by daylight. But inquiry revealed that the snow, such as it was, had ceased by midnight.

Naturally none of us at the Cloisters knew this at the time. I did not go to bed at all. Tony was in his study by that time, with Bill Sterling trying to give him something to quiet him, and Tony refusing. By daylight Mr. Elliott appeared, and finally the two police officers joined the group.

It was Hopper who told Tony his mother had been shot. He refused at first to believe it.

“Shot?” he said. “I don’t believe it. Who would shoot her?”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Wainwright. Do you know any reason why she would have done it herself?”

He stared at them with reddened eyes. “Mother kill herself!” he said. “Never.” Then the import of what had been said dawned on him. He got up, his face dead-white. “If she was shot she was murdered,” he said, “and before God I’ll kill whoever did it.”

The men had breakfast before they dispersed. Reynolds managed to get Tony to drink some coffee and finally to go up to his room, but he was still profoundly shocked. The telephone began to ring early, and at last in desperation I settled myself in the library and stayed there.

We were virtually in a state of siege that morning. Jim threw what amounted to a cordon of men around the playhouse and the Cloisters itself. The big entrance gates were closed, and men stationed there. I have thought since that in the presence of great tragedy there is almost no time for grief. Certainly there was no time for thought, so far as I was concerned. Only Maud, still lying in her big bed, was at peace that day.