Telling the story had done her good. She trembled, especially when it came to the scarf, but her color was better.

“So that’s it, Pat,” she said. “It isn’t any use going to Jim Conway with it. What could he do? I saw nobody. She was dead when I got there, and Bill says she died at once. I didn’t even hear a shot. And”—she tried to smile—“I didn’t kill her. The only gun I have ever handled in my life is the one I found in Don’s room, and you remember what happened to that. But how did you know?”

She was suddenly excited again. She half rose out of her chair as the import of this struck her.

“Somebody we both can trust saw your car going in that night,” I said. “But you needn’t worry. It won’t be told.”

But she knew the truth at once. “Larry and Audrey!” she said. “The poor children! What am I to do, Pat? What am I to do?”

“Call them in and tell them what you’ve told me. They’re waiting downstairs now. Of course, they don’t suspect you but they’re worried a lot. Better do it, Lydia.”

And to the three of us and Bill Sterling, whom I managed to locate, she repeated that story of hers that day. Repeated it with Bill holding her hand and Audrey on the floor at her knee. She gave it in even more detail than before: Maud’s urgent voice, the spot of blood on her hand when she got home, the wiping it off, the drying and cleaning of her shoes.

It was Larry who at the end said the unexpected thing. “What was wrong with your tire that night?”

She looked surprised. “There was a nail in it. Why?”

“Well, look,” he said, his young face excited. “Suppose somebody wanted you to be late that night or not get there at all. What’s simpler than to blow out a tire?”

“I don’t think anybody knew I was to meet her there.”

“That’s where you and I differ,” he said loftily. “Somebody did know, and that somebody found her there waiting for you and shot her. That’s easy.”

We held a consultation of sorts after that. Bill and I believed Jim Conway should be told, but not the city detectives. Jim knew Lydia and would believe her. Audrey wanted it kept a secret. “What good does it do to tell it? She doesn’t know who did it.” And Larry wanted to form an informal partnership with Bill, the two of them to solve the mystery and send the murderer to what he called the hot squat.

In the end it was decided to tell Jim, and we finished with tea and toasted English muffins, as though by shoving our troubles onto Jim’s broad shoulders we had more or less done away with them.

It is not surprising that his first reaction to our story was one of pure indignation. “The whole lot of you ought to be jailed,” he said. “All through this case people have been holding out on the police. Why didn’t you tell that story at the inquest, Lydia? We’d have had a different verdict.”