women?'
'Yes.'
'But you told her you wouldn't go to the meeting?'
Mrs. Jaffee's hands were fists again, but not as tight as before. 'And I told her I wouldn't be a director either. I didn't want to get mixed up in it in any way at all. I didn't want to have anything whatever to do with it. She said I seemed to be perfectly willing to accept the dividend checks, and I said certainly I was and I hoped they would keep coming forever, and they probably wouldn't if I started butting in. I told her I hoped her new arrangement, the board of directors and the president, would work all right, but if it didn't there was nothing I could do about it.'
'Had she asked you before about coming to a stockholders' meeting?'
'No, that was the first time. I hadn't seen her for more than a year. She phoned and came to see me when she heard about Dick's-my husband's-death.'
'I thought she was your closest friend.'
'Oh, that was a long time ago.'
'How long?'
She eyed me. 'I'm not enjoying this a bit.'
'I know you're not.'
'It's not doing anyone any good either.'
'It might. However. I figure I've got a dollar's worth, so I'll settle for two bucks if you insist.'
She turned her head and called, 'Olga!' In a moment the Valkyrie came marching in, by no means silently. Mrs. Jaffee asked her if there was any coffee left, and she said there was and was requested to bring some. She went and soon was back with the order, this time on a tray without being told. Mrs. Jaffee wriggled to the edge of the divan, poured, and sipped.
'I can tell you how old I was,' she said, 'when I first met Pris.'
I said I would appreciate it very much.
She sipped more coffee. 'I was four years old. Pris was about two weeks. My father was in her father's business, and the families were friends. Of course, with children four years is a big difference, but we liked each other all along, and when Pris's mother died, and soon afterward her father, and Pris went to live with the Helmars, she and I got to be like sisters. We were apart a lot, since we went to different schools, and I graduated from college the year she started, but we wrote to each other-we must have written a thousand letters back and forth. Do you know about her leaving college and setting up a menage in the Village?'
I said I did.
'That was when we were closest. My father had died then, and my mother long before, and I practically lived with Pris, though I had a little place of my own. The trouble with Pris is she has too much money.'
'Was and had,' I corrected.
'Oh. Yes. Her income was enormous. After a few months of the Village all of a sudden she was off, and do you know what her excuse was? Her maid-that was Margaret-she had to take Margaret to New Orleans to see her sick mother! Did you ever hear anything to beat it? Off she went, leaving me to close up the place in the Village. We were still friends all right; she wrote me from New Orleans raving about it, and the first thing I knew, here came a letter saying that she had found her prince and married him, and they were off for Peru, where he had an option on the Andes Mountains, or approximately that.'
Mrs. Jaffee finished the coffee, put the cup and saucer down on the tray, and wriggled back until she was against the cushions. 'That,' she said, 'was the last letter I ever got from Pris. The very last. Maybe I still have it-I remember she enclosed a picture of him. I wondered why she didn't write, and then one day she phoned me- she was back in New York, and she was alone, except for Margaret, and she was calling herself Miss Priscilla Eads. I saw her a few times, and when she bought a place up in Westchester I went there once, but she was a completely different person, and she didn't invite me again, and I wouldn't have gone if she had. For nearly three years I didn't see her at all, until she had been to Reno and come back and joined the Salvation Army-do you know about that?'
I said yes.
'She was through with that too at the time she heard of my husband's death and came to see me. She had decided to take up her father's business where he had left off, only of course she wouldn't own it until she was twenty-five. She seemed more like the old Pris, and we might have got together again, but I had just lost Dick and I was in no condition to get together with anyone, so, the way it went, I didn't see her again until last week, and then I didn't-'
She stopped abruptly and jerked her chin up. 'For God's sake, my not doing what she wanted-that didn't have anything to do with her being killed, did it? Is that why you wanted to see me?'
I shook my head. 'I can't answer the first one, but it's not why I wanted to see you. Did she get in touch with you again? A phone call or letter?'
'No.'
'Did any of the others, the Softdown people?'
'No.'
'Where were you Monday night? Not that I want an affidavit, but the police will be asking.'
'They will not!'
'Sure they will, unless they crack it before they get to you. Practice on me. Name the people you
