(h) The scrap of newspaper, added from his wallet.

(i) The label of a London tailor, cut from that coat of Don’s, with the number of Maud’s car inked in.

“It was all there,” he said. “I’d moved them around, like playing checkers, and I’d always get the same result. I was guessing part of it. Take the garter. It looked to me as though whoever got Don out of the pool hadn’t waited to dress. That cut a bit off the time. Take the scar. I was guessing there too, but I was pretty sure I was right. But who the hell did it? That stopped me.

It was a gloomy interval, and then one day it turned abruptly to sadness. Roger was poisoned.

I find it hard to write about. He had been my steady companion for months, especially since Maud’s death. He had slept outside my door at night, lay in the office when I was busy, and loped along the bridle path when I took Prince for a run in the brisk air.

There was no reason then to think that it was deliberate. I had taken him for his favorite walk, the footpath to the Farm. He had been in high spirits, but on the way back he began to lag. Before I got him home he collapsed entirely, and I ran to the stables for help. But he died before he could get any aid. When Tony came home he found me on my knees in the stable, bending over that big inert body. He looked sick, but he stooped down quietly and kissed the back of my neck.

“Listen, darling,” he said. “He had a happy life, and now he’s probably in some comfortable dog heaven of his own. Better come back to the house.”

I went, still sick at heart and Bessie or no Bessie he kept his arm around me. It was not until night that the veterinary reported the poison, and Tony came down to Miss Mattie’s and told me.

“Strychnine in a ball of meat,” he said. “Some farmer probably, after the hounds. Most of them loathe the hunt.”

But I don’t think he believed that. I know I did not.

I grieved over Roger for days. Otherwise things went on somehow. Lydia was at last really preparing for her marriage. In town Julian’s lawyers were working on his defense, with Tony and Dwight Elliott sitting in now at the conferences. Maud had been gone for over a month, and the verdict of suicide still stood. I went to town one day and bought myself a fur coat, out of sheer misery.

Then, early in December, I had a visit from Jim Conway. He came into my office, opened a window, sat down, filled his pipe and lit it, and proceeded to pull out an automatic and put it on my desk in front of me. I eyed it warily.

“Ever use one of these things?”

“Never.”

“Well, you’re going to learn right now.” I looked up at him, but he was serious. “No fooling, sister,” he said. “I don’t care much about your going about alone, especially after dark. I don’t want to find you some night in a ditch, freezing without your clothes. Come on outside. I’ve got a place picked for your first lesson.”