She lay still, after he had gone, looking at the moon. She felt very tired, but she was peaceful, too. It was over. Court had said so. She wrapped herself in his promise like a blanket, and fell asleep. She was still asleep when, at eleven, the inspector drove in under the porte-cochere.

Susie and Carlton were in the library. Carlton’s face was haggard, and even Susie looked stricken. She could accept murder, but she could not face suicide, or the attempt at it. Life was too important to her, the love of it too strong.

She sat beside Carl, his head drawn down on her shoulder, her eyes soft.

“Don’t be a jackass,” she said. “Of course she didn’t do it.”

“Then why would she try to kill herself?”

“Because she’s the same kind of fool I am. Because she’s a one-man woman.” She sat up and lit a cigarette. “Let’s forget it,” she said. “Let’s think about a farm. You can raise what you want, and I’ll raise pigs. I rather like pigs,” she said. “At least they’re natural. They don’t pretend to be anything but pigs.”

“So long as you’re around, old girl,” he said huskily. “So long as you’re around.”

They did not hear the inspector as he went up the stairs and tiptoed into Mrs. Fairbanks’s room, closing the door behind him. He did not turn on a light, or sit down. Instead, he went to a window and stood looking out. The whole thing was not to his taste. He had come at Hilda’s request, and it was not like her to be dramatic. So Marian Garrison had tried to kill herself! It might be a confession, or the equivalent of one. And where the hell was Hilda, anyhow?

He was rapidly becoming indignant when suddenly without warning the radio behind him roared into action. He almost leaped into the air with the shock. It was playing the Habanera from Carmen, and the din was terrific. He was turning on the lights when Hilda came in.

For the first time in his experience she looked frightened. She shut off the machine and confronted him.

“That’s how it was done,” she said, and sat down weakly in a chair.

“What do you mean, that’s how?”

She did not answer directly. She looked tired and unhappy.

“It’s a phonograph. You set the radio dial on to a certain place and turn it on. It’s a blank spot, where there’s no station. Nothing happens, of course. But if you’ve got this machine plugged in on the same circuit, even in another room, it plays through the radio. As it did here.”

“There was no phonograph in the house that night,” he said stubbornly.

“I think there was.”

“Where was it? We searched this house for one. We didn’t find it.”

When she did not answer he looked at her. She was sitting still, her tired hands folded in her lap, her blue eyes sunken, the life gone out of her.