“Oh, blast the radio,” he said.

He went out into the hall and sent an officer to Courtney Brooke’s house. After that he sent for Janice. She came in slowly, her eyes still red, and Hilda felt a wave of pity for her. Before going to bed she had wrapped the long ends of her hair in curlers, and they made her look childish and naïve. Even the inspector spoke gently.

“Sit down, Miss Garrison,” he said. “You know we have to ask all sorts of questions in a case like this. You needn’t be afraid. All we want is the truth.”

“I don’t know anything.”

“I don’t suppose you do. You were asleep when it happened, weren’t you?”

“I don’t know when it happened, but I wasn’t asleep when Susie yelled. I wasn’t sleepy, and Granny’s radio had been turned on full.”

“You hadn’t expected to go out? Into the grounds, I mean.”

Jan looked puzzled.

“Out? No. Why should I?”

“Let’s say, to meet someone?”

It took her by surprise. She stared at him. Then a look of horror spread over her face. She looked wildly about the room, at Hilda, at the door. She even half rose from her chair.

“I don’t know what you mean,” she managed to gasp.

The inspector’s voice was still quiet.

“Suppose you meant to meet someone by the garage. Then it rained, and you didn’t go. That would be understandable, wouldn’t it? He came, but you didn’t.”

“Nobody came. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Would you swear on oath that you had no appointment to meet Doctor Brooke by the garage tonight?”

She only looked bewildered.

“Doctor Brooke!” she said. “Certainly not. He can see me whenever he wants to, here in the house.”

He let her go, watching her out with a puzzled look on his face.

“Well, what scared her?” he demanded. “Do I look as formidable as all that, or—What about this Amos, anyhow? Think he’s reliable?”

“He’s a mischiefmaker. Stubborn and sly. He’s probably honest enough.”

“What is ‘honest enough’?” he inquired quizzically.

But Hilda was thinking. She was remembering Jan’s story that Courtney Brooke had seen her father outside the fence a night or two before. That, she was convinced, had been behind Jan’s terror just now. Yet there were so many other things that she felt dizzy. The coldness for a day or so between Carlton and Susie, and Susie’s fainting. Her idiotic story about going to the garage for cigarettes. Carlton, earlier in the week, carrying something from the stable and being locked out. The bats and so on in Mrs. Fairbanks’s room, and the closet door which opened and closed itself.

They must make a pattern of some sort. Only what had they to do with an old woman dead of a knife thrust in a closed and guarded room?

It was just before young Brooke’s arrival that one of the detectives from upstairs came down and stood in the doorway. He looked rather sheepish.