She got up and stubbed out her cigarette. “You look very nice lying there,” she said. “Very pretty and wholesome. One of the golfing and riding girls, aren’t you? But if I were you I wouldn’t dream any dreams about Tony Wainwright. I can crush him flat any minute I want to.”

Chapter Thirteen

WE ALMOST LOST MAUD the next morning. I had been hours in getting to sleep after that visit of Bessie’s, and I did not rouse until Nora brought in my breakfast tray and a rather puzzling piece of news. The pool at the Stoddard place, she said, had been emptied during the night, and Julian Stoddard was raving all over the place.

“He’s had all the men up, miss,” she said. “They deny it, but somebody did it.”

I lay back and thought. Nobody outside of the police and the men gathered in Jim Conway’s office the day before had known positively where the button and the slipper had been found. True, Jim had taken all the guards away from the other pools, but not until late in the day. But why drain the Stoddard pool at all? The murderer knew he had used our playhouse, and an innocent person would have no object in doing it.

That was to remain a puzzle for a long time. “Every time I thought I was on my way,” Jim was to say later, “that damned pool of the Stoddards’ got up and hit me in the head.”

But I was to have other things to think about that day. So far Maud had taken the affair as might be expected. She was shocked, especially that the murder had taken place where it did. She was sorry for Lydia and had sent her masses of flowers from the conservatory. She had even considered asking Audrey to the Cloisters at least until the funeral was over. But she had never really recovered from her early illness in August. She would start for a walk around the place, only to turn back in ten minutes or so.

“I must be getting old,” she would say. “Go on, Pat. I’ll rest a little and go back.”

And that morning she finally collapsed.

I was still in my room when, about ten o’clock, Hilda came running in looking as though her world had dropped from under her.

“Please hurry, Miss Pat, Mrs. Wainwright has fainted.”

I went over as I was, pulling on a dressing gown as I ran but not bothering with slippers. Maud was on the floor of her bathroom, that famous marble room with the sunken tub and the gold-plated fixtures. She lay flat, but she was conscious. She looked up at me from a face as white as chalk.

“Don’t tell Tony,” she whispered. “Get me out of here first.”

She was partially dressed, but she was shivering as if with a chill. I found some aromatic ammonia and gave it to her, while Hilda slipped a pillow under her head. But she would not let us call Tony or Bill Sterling until we had gotten her back into her bed. I held her on the side of it while Hilda undressed her and slipped a nightgown over her head. I think she was barely conscious, and once in bed she collapsed entirely.