I thought of something. “Did you ever tell Maud, Margery?”

“No. How could I?”

She went on. When they had found Don’s body, and it was said he had been drowned in somebody’s pool, she almost lost her mind. “They were searching all the pools for clues,” she said drearily. “And I didn’t know, Pat. I wasn’t sure. I know now that Julian didn’t do it. But there was that awful car, left in our ravine, and Julian hadn’t come home straight from Maud’s party. Then I heard Jim Conway was going to search the pool. He was looking for a clue of some sort. He even put a guard over it. He sat here on this bench all afternoon. It was dreadful.”

So she had done the best she could. When the guard was called off she was puzzled. “I came out that night and emptied the pool,” she said. “I couldn’t wait. I had to know. And there was nothing in it. Nothing at all.”

That had been only an impulse, however, induced by sheer panic. When she thought it over she knew Julian had had nothing to do with Don’s death. “It wasn’t only that he wouldn’t do a thing like that, Pat. He had no reason to. I had never told him about Bessie. So far as he was concerned we weren’t threatened at all.”

I believed her. I believed her too when she denied that she had gone to the playhouse the night of Maud’s death. The very thought of the playhouse was abhorrent to her. She said with a shudder that she had not been inside the place since Don’s death, and that she hated even to look at it. “That’s the truth, Pat,” she said, laying a cold hand on mine. “You must believe me. If Maud had sent for me I might have gone. She never did.”

We separated after that, she to go back to the house and Julian, I to go to my car. I did not know what to do, except to forget Miss Connor. I did not believe Julian had killed Don, and Margery’s secret was safe with me.

I do not remember being struck. All I recall is hearing someone close behind me, and half turned to see who it was. It was all I was to remember for two full days.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

THEY ARRESTED JULIAN STODDARD on Sunday and took him to the city. I knew nothing about it. There was a complete gap between the time when I watched Margery Stoddard start for her house at eleven-thirty on a Friday night, and the hour when I opened my eyes on Sunday evening, to feel something cold and damp on my head and to see Amy Richards in cap and uniform standing by my bed.

“What’s the matter?” I asked. “Am I sick?”

“You’ve got a bare chance to live, if you’ll leave that ice bag where it belongs. You’ve been throwing it out for the last forty-eight hours.”