“Listen,” he said roughly. “Are you trying to tell me that Ida did all this?”

“Ida? No. She used them, of course. Amos saw her in the cupola. I suppose she was given a reason. Maybe to get Mrs. Fairbanks to leave the house. Maybe something worse, to scare her to death. And she hid the machine in the loft of the stable the next day. She carried it out in some blankets. That was why Jan was hurt, and I was locked in. The machine was hidden there, behind some trunks, or in one, I don’t know. It had to be taken away, of course. She was in the loft when Jan got there. She had to get out.”

She looked at her watch, and Fuller at last lost patience.

“Haven’t we played around enough?” he said. “What is all this? Are you giving someone a chance to get away?”

She shook her head.

“I don’t think so. No. I—” She closed her eyes. “Ida had to die, you see. She knew too much, so she got arsenic in a cup of tea. In the sugar, I suppose. The way Mrs. Fairbanks got it. If it hadn’t been for Ida—”

Downstairs the telephone was ringing. Hilda got up and opened the door. Carlton was talking over it in the library. He sounded excited, and a moment later he slammed out the side door. Hilda was standing very still, listening while the inspector watched her. Her eyes were on the stairs when Susie came running up. She was gasping for breath, and her eyes were wide with shock.

“It’s Eileen,” she gasped. “She’s killed herself with Frank’s service revolver.”

Then, for the first time in her life, Hilda fainted. The inspector caught her as she fell.

Chapter 27

Two nights later Inspector Fuller was sitting in Hilda’s small neat living-room. The canary was covered in his cage, and the lamplight was warm on the blue curtains at the windows and on the gay chintz-covered chairs. Hilda was knitting, looking—he thought—as she always did, blandly innocent. Only her eyes showed the strain of the past two weeks.

“Why did you do it, Hilda?” he said. “Why did you telephone her that night?”

“I was sorry for her,” said Hilda. “I didn’t want her to go to the chair.”

“She wouldn’t have done that. After all, a prospective mother—”

“But you see she wasn’t,” said Hilda. “That was her excuse to get into the house.”

He stared at her.

“How on earth did you know?”

Hilda looked down at her knitting.

“There are signs,” she said evasively. “And it’s easy to say you have a pain. Nobody can say you haven’t.”

“But Garrison didn’t deny it.”

“What could he do? She was his wife, even if he hadn’t lived with her for years. I suppose he had suspected her all along, after the arsenic. I knew he was watching her. He’d followed her there at night, maybe when she went to see Ida. In the grounds, perhaps.”