She was still defiant. “If it’s any of your business, I was meeting somebody.”

“Was that somebody Don Morgan?”

She broke then. It wasn’t Don Morgan. She hadn’t seen him for years. She wasn’t sure she had ever seen him. As for killing him, why would she do such a thing? And even if she had, could she have gotten him out of that pool and into a car? “Go on up and look at the dress I wore,” she said. “See if it was wet.”

“I have already seen it,” he replied.

That stopped her. At least she didn’t say anything further about going away. But as to whom she had met that night she was stubbornly silent.

“It has nothing to do with this,” she snapped. “God knows I haven’t much life of my own here, but I have some. And what I have is my own affair.”

He let that go. He was imperturbable. He reached into a pocket and brought out a photograph of Don, taken before he went away. “This the fellow you knew in Paris?”

She took it gingerly. “It looks like him. I wouldn’t swear to it.”

“I suppose you see why you can’t run out on us,” he observed, still placid. “We’ll make it easy for you, but I advise you to stick around. Does your husband know you met this man that night?”

“I haven’t said it was a man. No, in any case.”

“You’re sure of that, are you?”

“Good God,” she said, and laughed. “Can you see me meeting Don Morgan that night, and Tony protecting my honor by killing him?”

“He might have been protecting his own honor,” said Hopper.

She stubbed out her cigarette and sat still for a moment. I have wondered since if she was not tempted that day. She could have told the story, even her own part in it, and then gone away. She must have thought of that, sitting there in her English tweeds and English-made walking shoes, confronted by that tall, gaunt nemesis. But evidently she decided against it. She looked at him and then got up.

“All right,” she said. “You win. I’ll stay.”

Chapter Seventeen

THAT WAS THE AFTERNOON after Evans had disappeared. The house had been pretty well demoralized even before that, with Mrs. Partridge going about like a scared rabbit, some of the maids threatening to leave, and none of them willing to go out of the house at night, even to the movies. As Sunday passed with no news of the old man, even Reynolds’ impassive face began to look moody. As for the two footmen, they were obviously in a state of jitters.

Tony was out all that day, and on Monday they started a search of the hills. Evans had been gone for thirty-six hours by that time, and there was still no trace of him whatever. Things were being reported, however, that gave his disappearance a sinister look. For one thing, the hospital reported that he had not been the same since the murder.