“I don’t think so. I don’t want any.”

“I’ll send some around from Nelson’s,” said Gus the efficient. “You take it. Maybe you won’t want it. Take it anyhow.”

Man’s cure-all, I thought, drying my eyes. Bessie dead on the ground, and Tony and Gus suggesting a drink. I began to laugh, and suddenly Gus’s pat became a good hard slap. I was so astonished that I stopped laughing and stared at him.

“Sorry, but I had to do it,” he said, his face a brilliant red. “Can’t have you getting hysterical, miss. I hope you’ll forget it. I’m kind of excited myself.”

“Thanks, Gus. I needed it.”

That is all I know myself of that morning. Miss Mattie put me to bed. I lay there shivering until Gus brought around a bottle of brandy. Miss Mattie stood over me while I drank a little, and gradually I began to relax. I think I even escaped into sleep. I had to escape somewhere.

It was weeks before I heard the full story of that morning. Bill Sterling said Bessie had been dead for hours. He did not move the body, but from what he could see it looked as though her skull had been fractured. She had probably either died at once or been unconscious. There was no evidence that she had been shot.

I believe Jim picked up the revolver then, using a pencil in the barrel to do it and wrapping it carefully in a clean handkerchief. After that they re-covered the body and waited for the coroner. Reynolds had brought out hot coffee. Some of them drank it, but Tony did not. When a young deputy coroner arrived he found the immediate group still there. The others had dispersed at Jim’s order to search the grounds for the weapon.

The deputy coroner’s examination was a short one. He turned the body over, and Tony looked away. In the sharp morning light Bessie’s rouge and lipstick were hideous against the blue-white pallor of her face; but she looked calm, quite peaceful. “Probably never knew what hit her,” said the deputy coroner, getting up and shaking down his trouser legs. “I’ll want a better examination before I talk.”

The homicide men arrived then, piling out of their car with their equipment. There was a long interval when, the ground cleared, they took photographs and examined everything in the vicinity. Then they allowed the body to be carried into the house.

By that time O’Brien had appeared. His cocksure manner was gone, but he had nothing of importance to tell them. He had left at seven in the morning as usual, going out by the kitchen door. Having no car, he had taken the short cut to the village by way of the country club, and so had not seen the body, hidden from the rear of the property by a screen of evergreens.

As for the night before, he stoutly maintained that he had examined the west wing door after the house had settled down, and that the chain was on it then. He had heard no noise, nor had anything suspicious happened, so far as he knew.