Janice did not go at once, however. She picked up Hilda’s textbook and opened it at random.

“I suppose it’s pretty hard, studying to be a nurse.”

“It’s a good bit more than study.”

“I would like to go into a hospital. But, of course, the way things are—It must be wonderful to—well, to know what a doctor means when he says things. I feel so ignorant.”

Hilda looked at her. Was it a desire to escape from this house? Or was she perhaps interested in young Brooke? She thought back over the long line of interns she had known. She did not like interns. They were too cocky. They grinned at the young nurses and ignored the older ones. Once one of them had grabbed her as she came around a corner, and his face had been funny when he saw who it was. But Brooke must have interned long after she left Mount Hope Hospital.

She changed the subject.

“Tell me a little about the household,” she suggested. “Your mother, your uncle and aunt live here. What about the servants?”

Jan sat down and lit a cigarette.

“There are only three in the house now,” she said, “and Amos outside. There used to be more, but lately Granny—well, you know how it is. I think Granny is scared. She’s cut down on them. We even save on light. Maybe you’ve noticed!”

She smiled and curled up in the chair, looking relaxed and comfortable.

“How long have they been here, Miss Janice?”

“Oh, please call me Jan. Everybody does. Well, William’s been here thirty years. Maggie, the cook, has been here for twenty. Ida”—Jan smiled—“Ida’s a newcomer. Only ten. And, of course, Amos. He lives over the stable. The others live upstairs, at the rear.”

“I suppose you trust them all?”

“Absolutely.”

“Any others? Any regular visitors?”

Janice looked slightly defiant.

“Only my father. Granny doesn’t like callers, and Mother—well, she sees her friends outside. At the country club or at restaurants. Since the—since the trouble Granny hasn’t liked her to have them here.”

She put out her cigarette and got up. The box containing the bat was on the table. She looked at it.

“I suppose you’ll show that to the police?” she asked.

“That seems to be your grandmother’s idea.”

Janice drew a long breath.

“I had to do it,” she said. “I was afraid they would say she was crazy. Have her committed. I had to, Miss Adams.”

“Who are ‘they’?”

But Janice had already gone. She was walking down the hall toward her bedroom, and she was fumbling in her sleeve for her handkerchief.

Hilda was thoughtful after the girl had gone. She got out her knitting, but after a few minutes she put it down and opened her textbook. What she found was far from satisfactory. Arsenic was disposed of in a brief paragraph:

Many drugs, such as dilute acids, iron, arsenic, and so on, are irritating to mucous lining of the stomach and may cause pain, nausea, and vomiting. And death, she thought. Death to an old woman who, whatever her peculiarities, was helpless and pathetic.