“I’m so tired, Larry,” she said. “I’m too old for this sort of thing. Can’t I go home and go to bed?”

I knew then that it was an act. In all her life Mother has never admitted age, and she has never wanted to go to bed until there was nothing left to stay up for. For some reason she wanted to get out of the house.

I played it up as well as I could. “She’s had a frightful day,” I said. “And of course she is getting on, as she says.” She gave me a nasty look from under her eyelids. “I can take her home, if you like. That is, if she can walk.”

They wouldn’t let her walk, however. They took her in one of the police cars, and one of my most vivid memories of that awful night is Mother padding out in her stocking feet, holding to an officer’s arm and giving everyone in the room but Andrew Leland a faint but winsome farewell nod.

I followed her out. I knew she wanted me to go with her, but I couldn’t leave Larry. A man in the hall was sprinkling powder on the light switch there. He blew on it and then examined it with a magnifying glass. The man called Tony King was on his knees inspecting the stair carpet. When I looked out Mother was getting into the police car, and she was still putting on an act, crawling in as if she was too feeble to lift her legs.

Only it was not an act, as I learned later.

III

It must have been about four in the morning before the mounted policeman was brought in. Without his mount, of course. He was a tall young man, and he looked scared to death. Evidently he had been in bed, for his hair was still rumpled. He had put on his uniform, however, and he blinked in the light as he stood in the doorway.

The Inspector eyed him coldly.

“Officer Barnes?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You were on duty here tonight?”

“Not here, sir. I was ordered to report outside the big house up the drive, to watch the traffic. The Mayor—”

“We know all that. Did you leave your post at any time during the evening?”

“No, sir. That is …”

He looked at me.

“Well, did you?” snapped the Inspector.

He gulped.

“Only once, sir. A call of nature. I …”

“All right,” said the Inspector, rather hastily. “What I want to know is this. You were within sixty feet or so of the house. Did you see anyone leave that house at any time during the evening? Before the party broke up?”

“No, sir. I didn’t.”

Larry leaped to his feet, but the Inspector motioned for him to sit down again. He turned to Barnes, standing still and unhappy in front of him.

“Did you see a woman go up the drive and stand on the side terrace, looking in?”