Chapter 10

Mrs. Fairbanks was murdered on Saturday night, the fourteenth of June; or rather early on Sunday morning. Marian had been gone since Wednesday evening, and no word whatever had come from her. The intervening period had been quiet. There were no alarms in the house. On Friday Hilda caught up with her sleep, and Carlton was once more the loving husband, spending long hours beside Susie’s bed. He had insisted that she stay in bed.

But Susie was not talking, at least not to Hilda. She eyed her dinner tray Friday evening sulkily.

“Take that pap away and get me an honest-to-God meal,” she said. “I’m not sick. Just because I banged my head—”

“What made you do it, Mrs. Fairbanks? Why did you faint?”

“Why does anybody faint?”

“I thought possibly something had frightened you. You shrieked like a fire engine.”

“Did I?” said Susie. “You ought to hear me when I really let go.”

But her eyes were wary, and Hilda, bringing back the piece of roast beef and so on that she had demanded, was to discover Carlton on his hands and knees poking a golf club under her bed. He got up, looking sheepish, when Hilda came in.

“My wife thinks there is a rat in the room,” he explained carefully.

“A rat!” said Susie. “I’ve told you over and over—”

She did not finish, and Hilda was left with the baffled feeling that the entire household had entered into a conspiracy of silence.

By Saturday, save for Marian’s absence, the house had settled down to normal again. Susie was up and about. At dinner that night she persuaded Carlton to take her to the movies, and they left at eight o’clock. At eight-thirty Courtney Brooke came in, announcing to all and sundry that he had made three dollars in the office and was good for anything from a Coca-Cola to a ham on rye and a glass of beer. Mrs. Fairbanks chuckled.

“If that’s the way you intend to nourish my granddaughter—” she began.

“I?” he said. “I am to nourish your granddaughter? What will you be doing while she starves to death?”

She was more cheerful than Hilda had ever seen her when at last he left her and went downstairs to where Jan waited for him in the library.

Looking back later over the evening, Hilda could find nothing significant in it. Mrs. Fairbanks had locked her door at ten o’clock and pursued her usual mysterious activities until eleven. Hilda took advantage of part of that hour of leisure and of Carlton’s absence to examine both his and Susie’s rooms carefully. She found nothing suspicious, however, and save for Jan’s and young Brooke’s voices coming faintly from below the house was quiet except for the distant rumble of thunder. It was appallingly hot, and when she was at last allowed to put Mrs. Fairbanks to bed she opened a window.”

“You need the air,” she said, “and I’ll be just outside.”