“He didn’t get here until the middle of September,” he said. “I’d give a lot to know what he was doing in that six weeks, outside of trying to get into this house. If he did,” he added. “We’re still guessing about that.”

He looked at his notebook. “See here, Pat, what about this envelope that’s missing? Any idea what was in it?”

“It was for Tony. That’s all I know.”

“If she burned it there may be something in the fireplace. Let’s go, shall we?”

It was not easy to get out of the house unobserved. Cars were coming and going, cards were being left, the panoply and dignity of death was all about us. We made it during a brief lull. Jim produced a key to the playhouse and we went inside.

It was cold and damp. I could not even look in at the swimming pool. We went on to the living room and Jim dropped on his knees on the hearth. He sifted carefully through the wood ashes with his fingers, but there was nothing there. I sat down then. My knees were too weak to hold me. I was in the chair that had been drawn before the fireplace, and I tried to light a cigarette. My hands shook so that I dropped the match, and it fell between the cushion and the side of the chair. It was when I felt about for it that I discovered a paper.

I pulled it out. Jim had risen and was dusting his knees.

“What’s that?” he asked.

“It’s the list,” I said. “The list of her jewelry.”

He took it from me and looked at it. He appeared almost stunned. “That tears it,” he said. “She came down here to sell that stuff or to discuss selling it; and for some reason she was killed. Now who the hell could buy jewelry like this?”

Chapter Twenty-Five

THE FUNERAL TOOK PLACE the next day. Dwight Elliott had spent the night there, and made the arrangements. The services were held at the Cloisters, but Maud lay quiet upstairs in her room, with Tony sitting beside her, until they were over.

To everybody’s surprise, some of the Wainwrights from town came. There were a half dozen of them, including wives, but I do not think Tony ever knew they were there. After the services there was the long drive to the cemetery in the city, with Bessie in the car with me, nervous and smoking steadily.

So far as I remember she said little. Once she shivered. “So this is what it’s all about,” she said. “You live a while and then you die.” She flung her cigarette out a window. “Like that,” she said.

It was a strange drive, with Maud ahead, her hearty laugh stilled forever; going to lie beside John Wainwright in the big mausoleum at Fairview. The long cortege winding through the hills, a bright autumn sun, and then the gathering around the tomb, with flowers everywhere and Dr. Leland being handed some earth by the undertaker to sprinkle over the casket. “Thou knowest, Lord, the secrets of our hearts; shut not Thy merciful ears to our prayer.” And Tony standing there bareheaded, not listening, only looking. As if he still could not believe it, as if the solid earth had dropped from under his feet.