She was not surprised, on her return to the Fairbanks house, to learn from William that the police had taken away the window screen from Eileen’s room. But she was rather astonished to find Carlton, in a morning coat and striped trousers, and wearing a black tie, wandering around upstairs and carrying a hammer and an old cigar box filled with nails.

“Thought I’d nail up the other screens,” he said vaguely. “Can’t have people getting in and out of the house. Not safe.”

He went into Eileen’s room, a dapper, incongruous figure, and Hilda followed him. Eileen was sitting up in bed. She looked better, although she was still pale; and she managed an ironical smile when Carlton told her what he was doing.

“You’re a little late with that, aren’t you?” she said.

“Some of us still want to live, Eileen.”

“You can do that now, can’t you?” she said maliciously. “Live the way you like, get your Susie safe on a farm away from other men, raise pigs, do anything you damn well please.”

He stiffened.

“That was entirely uncalled for. If you were not a sick woman—”

“If I were not a sick woman I wouldn’t be here.”

He finished his hammering, and later Hilda, remembering that day, was to hear the noise as he moved from room to room, and even to smell the putty and white paint with which he neatly covered the signs of his labors.

He finished at eleven-thirty, which was almost exactly the time Fuller and his henchmen were leaving Frank Garrison. He had told a straight story, but the inspector was not satisfied. He stood in the long marble-floored gallery and put his hat on with a jerk.

“I’ll ask you not to leave town,” he said. “Outside of that, of course, you’re free. I suppose you have no idea where your first wife is? We’d like to locate her.”

“I am not in her confidence,” he said stiffly. “I would be the last person to know.”

Chapter 16

POLICE DEPARTMENT

From: Commanding Officer, 17th Precinct

To: Medical Examiner

Subject: Death of Eliza Douglas Fairbanks, of Ten Grove Avenue.

1. On June 15, 1941, at 2:15 a.m. a report was received from Inspector Harlan Fuller that a Mrs. Eliza Douglas Fairbanks, aged 72 years, had been found dead in her bed as a result of a stab wound in the chest.

2. Case was reported at once by Inspector Fuller and usual steps taken. Inspector Fuller and Captain Henderson of homicide squad were assigned to case.

The inspector had this document in front of him that noon. In such brief fashion, he thought, were the tragedies of life reported. Men and women died of violence. Tragedy wrecked homes. Hatred and greed and revenge took their toll. And each of them could be officially recorded in less than a hundred words.

Nor was the report of the autopsy more human. An old woman had died, cruelly and unnecessarily. Died in a closed room, with access to it almost impossible. And the autopsy, after recording her pathetic age, her shrunken weight, and the entirely useless examination of her head, abdomen, and thorax, merely reported the cause of death as an incised wound with a tract of two and one-half inches, which on being carefully dissected was shown to have reached the heart. And that the approximate time of death had been between twelve-thirty and one-thirty in the morning.