“What you’re saying, miss, is that close to three hundred people were in and out of this property tonight. That right?”

“That’s right.”

“They all drove in at the gate out there?”

“That’s the only way they could get in.”

But the knowledge that the Mayor had been among them made him treat us both with more marked consideration.

“Anything missing in the house?” he inquired. “It might have been a burglar. If she woke up and was raising an alarm … Anything valuable around?”

The idea of a burglar at least gave Larry something to hold to. He said Isabel’s jewels were in the house. In the safe in her room. He even listed them, while the officer wrote them down: her diamond and other earrings, her bracelets, her clips and her pearls—although pearls are worth a dime a dozen nowadays. But when the officer came back again he said the safe was closed and locked.

“Maybe if you’d come up and open it …” he suggested.

Larry however had taken all he could. He shook his head.

Mother was still on the stairs when the homicide squad arrived. They had to push past her. The Inspector came first, with his car jammed with detectives and a uniformed stenographer. Following him came another car with a photographer and fingerprint men, and soon after the captain of our local precinct, a youngish man who said he had been at a fire somewhere and been delayed. The hall and stairs were jammed, but Mother refused to move.

“She was my son’s wife,” she said. “I was fond of her. And some woman has to stand by her now. She’s—helpless.”

I had to take my hat off to her, tired as she was. She still had no slippers on her feet; she still hung on to her choker. But she never gave an inch, although she looked pretty sick.

“What I want,” she said, “is to know who did this to her. And why?”

That was at half-past twelve on Thursday, the 15th of last October, or rather the early morning of the 16th. There were police all over the house by that time, and to add to the confusion I had a half-dozen hysterical women on my hands. The sirens had wakened the maids, and one or two of them fainted when they heard what had happened. The rest were crying, and I would have given a lot to have slapped some sense into them. As it was, all I could do was force the cook to stop wailing and make coffee, and I took some myself. I was pretty jittery by that time. I was drinking it in the pantry when the photographer came and asked for a cup.

He was a tall, thin young man. He looked tired, and I gave him the coffee quickly. I hardly noticed him, which seems queer now; but he eyed me with interest.

“So you’re Judy Shepard,” he said.

“Judith,” I said. “My mother’s answer to my father’s wish that I be named for his sister Henrietta.”