“It’s lousy.”

“Maybe,” said Hopper, and got up. “Of course, there’s another possibility.”

“What’s that?” asked Stewart suspiciously.

“He may be getting ready for something that hasn’t happened yet,” said Hopper, and slouched out of the office, leaving the district attorney staring after him.

Chapter Thirty-Three

LIFE WENT ON FOR me somehow during the next few days. I took Miss Mattie to the Dramatic Club’s performance of Lady Windermere’s Fan. I saw Lydia now and then. The weather had settled into the usual gray despondency of late autumn, with the smoke from the mills coming down the valley and mixing at night with fog. In the morning I drove up the hill to the Cloisters, but the place was getting badly on my nerves.

I was completely isolated. I have no idea what Bessie did with her time. I never saw her. My lunch was served in the office, and except for Roger—and Mrs. Partridge’s complaints about Bessie’s attempts to run the house—I was alone most of the time.

Now and then there would be a note from Tony on my desk, brief and noncommittal. He would get home late, having had dinner in town, and be gone before I arrived there in the morning.

Luckily I had plenty to do. One afternoon Mr. Elliott came down early, and together we went over such of Maud’s papers as we could find. They were very few. She had always destroyed letters after she answered them. But he seemed puzzled that day.

“She had no private file?” he asked.

“None at all.”

“Well, you might look around,” he said. “Let me know if you find anything. And I wouldn’t talk about it, Miss Abbott. Tony knows I’m here, but probably what I’m looking for was in the envelope which has disappeared.”

I continued the search the next day when I listed Maud’s personal possessions for the appraisers. Hilda helped me, and in a small inside pocket of the coat Maud had worn the night of her death I found a slip of paper. It was not much. Written on it in Maud’s big hand was Lydia’s telephone number, but under it was a firm name I did not recognize.

“Summers and Brodhead,” I read. “Who are they, Hilda?”

“Mrs. Wainwright’s jewelers,” said Hilda tearfully. “They did her repair work, and made over things sometimes.”

“Had she said she needed anything done?”

“Not that I remember, miss.”

It seemed unimportant. I kept the slip, however, and we went on. It was heartbreaking business at best: the gold and tortoise-shell toilet articles; the beautiful furs, including a sable coat; the luxurious negligees and house coats. There were dozens of evening gowns too, rows of slippers to match, and even a book of sketches, each dress shown in color, with the accessories and jewels to go with it. Some of the jewels I had never seen. They were kept in the bank in town and only brought out for special occasions. But the name of Summers and Brodhead stuck in my mind, and at four that afternoon I called them up, explaining who I was.