“Audrey!” she caught at a chair. “Not Audrey, Pat. Why would she do that to me?”

I told her, not mincing words: Audrey’s story, the almost certainty that the police had found the gun, and Bill’s arrest as a result. She seemed hardly able at first to realize what it meant.

“These children,” she said. “They know so well what is right and what is wrong. They have no mercy, Pat.”

Then the full impact of what I had said about Bill reached her, and I thought she was going to faint.

It was some time before I got the story from her. Even then it was not particularly helpful. Don had had the gun. She had not known it until after he was killed, when she found it under his mattress. The police had not been there yet, and she had no reason to hide it. Why would she? Nobody had been shot. But she was afraid of firearms, so she had taken it and put it in the top of her closet, in a hatbox.

Then, little by little, the Evans story was brought out. Evans’s revolver was missing, and she began to wonder if this one was his. Of course, so far as she knew, Don had not been in Beverly when Evans was attacked, but he might have been. It didn’t sound rational, but it might have been that way.

She began to worry about it. One of the maids might find it, or Audrey. A night or two earlier she had buried it in the garden among the delphiniums, and Audrey saw her doing it.

“I thought she had gone out,” she said drearily. “Why would she do a thing like that? Putting it in Bill’s desk! She can’t think Bill killed Don. She can’t.”

“She does,” I said grimly. “She isn’t sure about you, but she’s pretty sure about Bill.”

That shocked her into speech. She tried to defend Audrey. “You don’t understand, Pat. She was crazy about Don; on the defensive every minute about him, and—oh, well, what does it matter now? She wanted me to take him back. She wouldn’t even speak to Bill.”

“Did she think it was Bill’s gun?”

“She said so. I suppose it’s understandable. I was hiding it, and she knew I never owned one. Don’t be too hard on her, Pat. I suppose she thinks she is avenging her father’s death.”

Audrey came in soon after that, but I did not look at her. I was at the telephone in the hall, having located Jim Conway in town, and Lydia was hastily dressing upstairs. Audrey sneaked past me just as Jim replied.

“It’s Pat, Jim,” I said. “Hold everything, will you? I’m bringing Lydia and Audrey Morgan in as soon as I can get there. I have some news for you. It ought to help.”

“Good girl,” he said. “Hurry, will you? They’re moving pretty fast here.”

I hung up and faced Audrey. She was pale and sullen.