“It wouldn’t hurt to look about a little,” she said cautiously. “I think Doctor Brooke would drive me out.”

He went to the window and stood looking out.

“Why would she do it?” he asked. “She had little or nothing to gain by the will.”

“Oh, I don’t think she killed Mrs. Fairbanks,” Hilda said quickly. “She hated the house. The work was too heavy, for one thing. She may have wanted to scare her into moving.”

“But you don’t believe that?”

“I don’t believe she killed herself. No.”

Before he left he saw Carlton.

“In view of what has happened,” he said, “I’d like to keep Miss Adams here for a day or two longer. You need not pay her. I’ll attend to that.”

“So we’re to have a spy in the house,” Carlton said bitterly. “What can I do about it? Let her stay, and the hell with it.”

Chapter 22

Old Eliza Fairbanks was buried that afternoon from St. Luke’s, with a cordon of police to hold back the crowd and photographers, holding cameras high, struggling for pictures of the family. Her small body in its heavy casket was carried into the church, and in due time out again. A long procession of cars drove up, filled, and drove away.

“What is it, a wedding?”

“Sh! It’s a funeral. You know, the old woman who got stabbed.”

Marian came out, her face bleak under her mourning. Carlton and Susie, Susie unashamedly crying. Jan, wan and lovely, but keeping her head high, and Courtney Brooke holding her arm. Nobody noticed Frank Garrison. He sat at the rear of the church, thinking God knows what; of his wedding perhaps in this same church, with Marian beside him; of Jan’s christening at the font, a small, warm body in his arms; of Sunday mornings when he sat in the Fairbanks pew, and a little old lady sat beside him.

He got out quickly when it was over.

It was five o’clock when the family returned from the cemetery, and six before Hilda had got Marian to bed and was free. She went quietly out the side door and past the stable to Huston Street, to find Courtney waiting for her in his car.

“I hope we make it,” he said. “The old bus does all right in town. When it stops I can have somebody fix it. But a trip like this—”

Hilda got in and settled herself.

“We’ll make it,” she said comfortably. “We’ve got to make it.”

Yet at first there seemed nothing to discover. Two elderly people, stricken with grief, Ida’s parents were only bewildered.

“Who would want to do that to her?” they asked.

“She was a good girl. She minded her own business. And she was fond of the family, miss. Especially Mrs. Garrison, Mrs. Marian Garrison. That’s her picture there.” Hilda looked. On the mantel was a photograph of Marian taken some years ago. “She was pretty then,” the mother said. “Ida used to help her dress. She—”