As a matter of fact, I had troubles of my own that morning. One of the difficulties in writing this story is of putting myself on paper. Events happened all around me, but I myself feel rather like a ghost, moving unseen and unreal through them. Yet like poor old Shylock I had dimensions, senses, affections, and passions. I felt pretty sick that day. For one thing, Amy reported that Bessie had tried to slip into Maud’s room while she was out of it on an errand.

“She’d asked to see her, and I’d told her she was asleep. What does she want in there anyhow? This isn’t the first time she’s tried it.”

The other was a growing fear that Tony might have been somehow involved in Don’s murder. I was confident that Bessie knew something. Her uneasiness, the fact that she locked herself in her room, the revolver in her bag, pointed to it; even her attempts to see Maud, and her statement to me that she could crush Tony any time she wanted. I could even go back on the morning Maud had fallen in the bathroom. Hilda out of the room, Maud partially dressed, and Tony coming in.

“Listen, Mother, I’ve got to tell you something. I can’t go on like this. I—”

I had no one to talk to that morning. Bessie was out somewhere. Maud was out of the question. And when I tried to talk to Hilda she shied like a frightened horse. I suppose Bill’s arrest had reached the servants’ hall, although no one had told me.

“How long were you out of the room, Hilda, when Mrs. Wainwright fainted? The day she took sick?”

“Not more than ten minutes, miss.”

“Did Mr. Tony see her that morning?”

“I wouldn’t know,” she said stiffly. “It’s not likely with her not dressed, miss.”

“Or Miss Bessie?”

“I don’t think she was up.”

But Hilda looked uneasy, and she escaped as soon as she could.

To escape, myself, I took Prince out before lunch and rode through the hills. Roger went along, and what with his companionship, the soft rustle of Prince’s feet among the fallen leaves, and the exercise I began to feel better.

As it happened, I met Julian Stoddard on the trail that day. He looked sober, but he unbent enough to speak as we passed.

“Glorious weather, isn’t it?”

“Wonderful,” I said.

As Prince chose that moment to shy at a pheasant and nearly knock my head off against the limb of a tree, this was the extent of our conversation. But I was to remember it later, his fine figure, his big horse, his general air of pride and well-being. He stood by until Prince discovered that the bird’s intentions were pacific.

“All right?” he called.

I waved back at him. “Nothing but a broken neck,” I said, and went on.

It was on my way home that morning that I saw Margery Stoddard and Bessie. They were together on the path between the Stoddard place and ours, and they were so deep in conversation that they never heard Prince as he approached. Bessie was sitting on a log smoking a cigarette, and Margery was standing in front of her, looking down at her.