“Well, Maud had lived here for eighteen years, and I saw her only once or twice in all that time.”

He has other objections, of course. It is his deep conviction that I have shown him as something between an idiot and a schizophrenic, as well as a rotten lover. But his jibes are to hide deeper emotions. He knows it and so do I. There are many chapters which he reads somberly, without comment. And he has read and reread the bit about Roger’s death. It has always been a sore point with him. He loved the dog.

“What did happen to him, Pat?”

“I’m sorry, Tony. I left that out on purpose. You see, Bessie—”

“All right. Go ahead.”

“She had been going out at night to see Margery Stoddard. I suppose he barked or something. She might have left it about. I don’t know, of course.”

“I see,” he says, and is silent for a long time.

Now and then he shows a light resentment, especially as to the night of his father’s murder.

“I suppose you have to direct suspicion to me,” he says. “Only thing I object to is that you seem to enjoy it. Why the hell all this stuff about my having no alibi for that night?”

“You hadn’t,” I tell him sweetly. “I suspected you myself for some time. Just what were you doing that night anyhow, Tony?”

He grins, gets up, and kisses me. “I was moving around, wondering just how long I could do without you, my darling,” he says.

But later on he puts down the manuscript and looks at the fire. He has been reading something about Maud, and his mouth looks soft and tender. “She was a great woman—Mother,” he says. “If only she’d told me about things. But she didn’t. She—”

Over Jim’s list of tangible clues he puzzles for a long time. “What about this garter?” he asks. “Roger found it in the grounds. You gave it to Jim. Then you drop it. That’s no way to do.”

“It wasn’t really important, Tony. Jim says when he and Hopper counted the time it took to—well, to do away with your father in the playhouse and so on, it took him some time to dress. He has an idea now that no dressing was done. Just a long coat perhaps. You see”—I hesitate here—“he thinks the drowning took place earlier, before the party broke up. All that was necessary then was to strip in a hurry, get the body out, and take it away.”

His mother’s appointment with Lydia at the playhouse puzzles him too. “What about it?” he said. “Did Mother notify him that she and Lydia were going to meet that night?”

“How else could he have known, Tony?”

“She didn’t tell Lydia why she wanted to see her?”

“No. But Lydia got the idea somehow that it was about Audrey.”

Perhaps my voice is a little cool, for he looks up and smiles. “Still jealous of little Audrey?” he inquires.