I did, explaining as best I could; but he had his answer even to that. “I see,” he said. “Of course, that explains the fire she lit in the playhouse. She burned them there. It’s obvious.”

He left at last, convinced that Maud had killed herself. He had a highball before he went, and he delivered a short oration to the newspaperman outside before he left.

“Sorry, boys, there’s nothing to it. She’d been sick. Bad heart. Probably took the easy way out. Of course,” he hedged, “something may develop later. Just now it looks like suicide. You can quote me on that.”

It was all pretty dreadful, the common little man on the terrace looking pompous, the cameras working, and the grief and silence in the house behind him. Yet in his own way he was right. The surface picture did look like suicide, and even Tony’s faith was shaken. When it was over he found me in my office, my head on the desk, and he looked agonized.

“Why would she have done it, Pat?” he said. “She was happy. I never knew a happier woman. She was gay and brave, at least until this last sickness of hers. But even then, why not some word to me? We were so close. You would think—”

He choked at that. He put his arms around me and I felt him trembling.

“Perhaps she thought she was incurably ill, Tony,” I said. “She wouldn’t have faced that easily.”

“She would have faced anything,” he said stubbornly, and let me go.

The inquest was held the next morning. Because I had found her I had to be present, but little was developed that I did not already know. The medical testimony showed that the shot had been fired from right to left, and that the bullet had passed entirely through the skull. The hair on the right side revealed that the gun had been held close to the head, and death had been instantaneous.

I was called to testify about finding the body, and there was a curious stillness when the coroner asked me if I had not been the one who also found Evans in the same place. I replied that I had, but that I had neither struck him on the head nor removed his trousers. It was silly, but I was sick and angry over it all.

The police evidence after that was rather perfunctory. It consisted largely in identifying the gun in the pool as the weapon used, and in showing the bullet and its markings, along with the ballistics report on it. Jim’s own report was limited to his being called after we found her, the position of the body, and so on. Nothing was brought out about the missing list and envelope, and indeed the only incident of any importance that day was Tony’s obstinate refusal to believe that his mother had killed herself. The papers carried the story that night; Refuses to Believe Mother Suicide—Son Says Mother Murdered, I hid them so Tony would not see them.