“Sorry to have scared you on the footpath that night, Pat. One of our men saw you leave the house and followed you to Margery’s. You carried a gun and he was damned suspicious of you. He says you beat the world’s record coming back.”

I sat up in bed. “Are you telling me that man on the path was a policeman?”

“Sure he was.”

“It was a dirty trick,” I said furiously. “I hate you, Jim Conway. I’ve had enough of the police to last me a lifetime.”

He laughed. “Well,” he said. “You haven’t a thing on them, sister. I had men stationed all over the place that night. When you started making rounds of the lower floor at the Cloisters they all had to dive for cover. There wasn’t a sofa that didn’t have a cop behind it, cursing to beat the band.”

Chapter Forty

THAT IS THE STORY, as Jim would say. Tony and I have never discussed it since it happened, but lately he has been reading it chapter by chapter as I have written it. He has been trying to pick up the loose ends for me, but also he has learned some of the things he never knew. He will look up suddenly and say, “I can’t find anything about what happened to Evans, my love. Slipped up there, haven’t you?”

“I’m sure it’s in,” I say vaguely. “About his being at Miss Connor’s, and being asphyxiated by the gas stove? It’s back where the deputy coroner came in when Bessie was—you know, when he said it was his second case that morning.”

There is a prolonged shuffling of yellow paper, and a snort from Tony. “Here it is. According to you he says: ‘One of these stoves with a rubber tube. Death machines, of course. The tube slipped, so—’ He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Hell of a job this is.’ I suppose that explains everything.”

“Well, it was Evans,” I say meekly. “I just forgot to put it in.”

“And was he murdered? Did the fair Miss Connor put him out of the way?”

“I don’t think he was murdered,” I say worriedly. “She was a nice little thing, Tony.”

“Of course she killed him,” he says. “Don’t you know you can’t leave any threads loose? He complained about the tea one day, and she up and kicked the tube off the stove. Why wasn’t it in the newspapers? His death, I mean.”

“He was there as Miss Connor’s brother. I know I’ve told that. So his name had to be Connor too. That’s perfectly plain, isn’t it?”

“When you tell it, it is. What about Margery? Didn’t the Connor woman tell her her father was dead?”

“Not right away. Margery was sick and in trouble. I think she even had him buried, Tony.”

“And it was Evans in the cemetery after all?”

“That’s in,” I say, exasperated. “He was trying to save Julian by pretending there was a lunatic around.”

Now and then he puts down the manuscript and sits thinking. For instance, the fact that Mr. Morgan and his mother could have lived for three years or so in close proximity puzzles him. “It doesn’t seem possible, Pat.”