Things were getting beyond his control. There was Bessie, sitting in his office and threatening even while she powdered her nose. “You can tell Tony what I know. If he does the right thing I’ll keep my mouth shut. If he doesn’t I’ll blow the whole thing wide open. He has no legal right to the Wainwright money, and you know it.” That was probably the day when she demanded a million dollars.

We will never know the details of her death. She must have suspected him by that time. But there had been the scene with Tony that night. She knew Tony was through. Her only hope was to see Dwight Elliott that night and bring pressure to bear on him. Perhaps she sent for him. What she said would have brought him in a hurry. “I’m being kicked out, but I can still keep my mouth shut—for a price.”

She had her revolver with her when she saw him. She did not trust him. To avoid O’Brien she probably arranged to meet him outside the west wing door, and from the position of the body Jim thinks she was sitting on the steps there talking to him when it happened. He would have been quiet, eminently reasonable. “Give me time, Bessie. I can’t raise money in a hurry.”

And Bessie, fingering the gun and looking at him with her cold blue eyes. “You can raise it if you have to. So can Tony.”

He must have killed her then. Perhaps he had hidden the Buddha outside for that purpose. Perhaps he invented an excuse, slipped into the house and got it. In any case, so far as we know he killed her with it.

That is all we know or guess about Bessie, lying as I saw her the next morning on the frozen ground, the bright sunlight on her pale hair and her flame-colored dress, with old Andy standing over her.

There is only one thing we have never discussed, Tony and I. That is the night of his mother’s death and what happened in the playhouse. Why did Dwight kill her? He must still have hoped that Lydia would never tell the story for Audrey’s sake, that Maud herself would see in time that she could make restitution without exposure. But I am quite certain I know.

She had suspected him of killing Don. Not at once. Perhaps not until that last night when he walked into the playhouse and she saw him there. She was shrewd. I think she herself led him to the pool. She was not afraid. As Tony said, she was not afraid of anything. She would have stood there with him beside her, neat and distinguished in his dinner clothes, and looked down to where Don had lain. “So this is where you killed him, Dwight. He threatened all you wanted in this world, power and place, so you killed him.”

Something of that sort must have happened. Perhaps he protested, but she would not have believed him. Only the three of them knew the story, so far as she could tell. Of those three Don was dead and she was innocent. Only Dwight remained.