“I wouldn’t talk,” I told her. “You fainted this morning. Bill Sterling thought you needed oxygen. That’s all.”

She seemed satisfied. She did not mention Dwight Elliott again, although he was in the house at the time. She closed her eyes, and this time she seemed to sleep normally. Nevertheless, we had had an anxious day. Bill slept in the house that first night, and two other nurses came to relieve Amy. I remember wandering around the house, feeling lost and forgotten, and it was a subdued Bessie who found me on the terrace long after dark.

She was quiet. In fact, I thought at the time that Maud’s illness had been a real shock to her.

“What do the doctors say?” she asked. “Is she going to die?”

It was blunt but characteristic. Nobody ever accused Bessie of any particular delicacy.

“She’s a little better,” I said, “and she’s a strong woman. That’s all I know.”

“All these nurses around, they scare the life out of me,” she observed, and lapsed into silence. It must have been late when Tony found us there and openly accused her of causing his mother’s collapse. It was not a nice scene. Both of them ignored me, and I think there was pure murder in Tony that night. But one thing I remember.

“You hated her,” he said. “You’ve always hated us both. It wouldn’t mean a thing to you if she died.”

She gave him a sort of twisted smile.

“Believe it or not,” she said, “that’s the last thing I wanted. If I were you,” she added, “I would be inventing an alibi for myself for Saturday night. You were pretty late getting back. Suppose I tell the police that?”

“Tell and be damned,” he said furiously, and went back into the house.

They had held the inquest that day, Monday; of course, none of us had been present. Maud’s condition had been too critical. But it was impossible to ignore what had happened. Early in the morning Jim Conway roped off the playhouse, and hour after hour I could see an officer in uniform patrolling it. Tony had ordered the chain put up across the entrance to the drive, but it did not prevent people from leaving their cars on the road and swarming in over the wall and through the shrubbery. It at least kept the house quiet, although there were times when the grounds looked almost like a garden party.

There were still reporters. They took pictures of everybody, and there was a graphic one in the papers that evening of Thomas carrying a lunch tray to the guard. Also one of the oxygen tanks being carried into the house, with the caption Millionairess Succumbs to Shock.

All in all it was pretty sickening, but Maud was at least holding her own. That was all that mattered to us then.

What I learned of the inquest I acquired largely from the papers; that the borough hall was jammed with “socialites,” and that the testimony was filled with drama. I suppose it was, although the early portion brought out nothing new: the finding of the body, the approximate hour of death, the discovery of water in the lungs, and so on. There was much interest when the slipper and button were produced, and Jim told of finding them in the playhouse pool. But the real excitement came later. An undergardener at the Stoddards’, put on the stand, stated that he had seen what he thought was Lydia’s car going up the lane to where it was found, and that it had been followed part of the way by a second automobile.