“She’s told it now,” said Bill belligerently.

“And so what? Where am I to go from here? What you’ve done is to hand me another murder case, with the trail weeks old. It was murder. She didn’t ask you to the playhouse so she could kill herself.”

He reached the point finally when he could ask some questions. For one thing he wanted to know if Lydia had seen the missing envelope. She had not. He asked if she had heard a shot, and again the answer was no. His real interest, though, was in the tire and Larry’s statement about it. But when he learned that the garage doors were always unlocked through the day and often through the night also, he was, as Larry said, fit to be tied. One thing he insisted on, however.

“Tony Wainwright has to know this,” he said. “Did he take the train or motor in, Pat?”

“The train. He usually comes down on the five-thirty. He’ll be home by now.”

Jim called him. There was a long and I gathered acrimonious discussion over the telephone, Tony furious at my having left the Cloisters, Jim calm as usual.

“She’ll live through it,” he said, “and tell Amy to stop shouting. I can hear her here…Certainly I didn’t steal her. She came by herself.” He glanced back at me. “Looks fine, too…Oh, shut up, Tony, and get down here.”

He hung up, looking amused. “Maybe they don’t like you up there, Pat, but there’s a hell of a rumpus going on. Better let me see Tony first. He sounds as though he’s ready to commit mayhem.”

It was a sober Tony who drove me home an hour later. He was divided between rage at me and bewilderment at Lydia’s story. But halfway up the hill he stopped the car at the side of the road and put his arms around me.

“I’m so frightfully in love with you, darling,” he said. “Maybe this isn’t the time or the place, but when I found you gone today—Pat, you will marry me some day, when I’m free, won’t you?”

“I can’t think of anything that will stop me, Tony.”

We did not say much the rest of the way. His face was quieter than I had seen it for a long time, as though at last he had reached peace and contentment. Poor Tony, when I think of that day my heart could break for him. There was no warning, no threat that more trouble was coming. But I shall always remember how he looked when he helped me up the terrace steps and into the hall.

Bessie, dressed for dinner, was standing there.

Chapter Thirty-One

I DO NOT WANT to go into that return of hers, her amused “Hello,” the faces of the footmen at the door and of Reynolds hovering in the background. Tony let go of me abruptly and I almost fell.

“What brought you back?” he said, ignoring the men.

“Why not? This is my home, isn’t it?”