“So that’s what you meant, Bill, when you asked me where was the body! Why didn’t you tell, right then and there?”
“Don’t be silly!” Cassie said impatiently. “No one would have believed him. They’d just have thought he was rambling. Bill had wit enough to know that if people didn’t start asking him questions about a body the minute he came to, then he could be sure that they hadn’t found one. If they had, he’d probably be answering questions yet.”
“But it was so,” Dow argued. “It happened, Cassie! That was something he saw before he got knocked out!”
“Yes, but he had to tell about it afterwards,” Cassie pointed out.
“Was Bill all alone when you found him?”
Dow nodded.
“Looking corpselike, himself. You see, Bill, I’d been hovering in your car, waiting for another chance to get at you— Somehow, telling you about this house was easy to think about when Cassie and I planned it. But when you stuck on those pince-nez and stared at me, I got cold feet. Every time.”
“Did you see me leave my drawing room?” Leonidas asked.
“Yes, and I followed. But I had to wait for a porter to shift bags in the vestibule, and then I stepped aside to let people pass. When I got into the next car, there wasn’t a trace of you. I decided you’d gone ahead to the coaches, so I kept going. I thought I’d lost you for good, when I hadn’t caught a glimpse of you by Back Bay. I was going back to hover in your corridor some more, and just as we pulled out, that drawing room door popped open and there you were on the floor. But there wasn’t any trace of anyone else in there. You saw that for yourself when they hunted the pencil— You know, I never guessed the Maharajah was a fake!”
“You ought to hear him talk about his friend Dr. Livingston,” Jock said. “That’s pretty good, too.”
Dow winced.
“I’ve met the doc. The druggist and I put up one of his headache powders, from an old recipe. Bill, who could have been under those blankets?”
“The girl, of course,” Cassie said. “It’s perfectly obvious, if her lipstick was on the floor. They had a tussle, and her bag dropped—now I wonder if last year’s zippers weren’t really better.”
Even Jock was stuck on that jump.
“Better than what, Gran?”
“Why, you remember, dear. Last year’s bags all had zippers, and they always caught and wouldn’t open, and we had to perform surgical operations with scissors to get things out. This year, everything’s just namby-pamby catches’, and bags just burst open if you look at them unexpectedly. Anyway, it’s obvious, Swiss Chard knocked the girl out. And—”
“Why?” Dow said. “Why would she knock out that beautiful creature?”
“Why,” Cassie asked reasonably, “should she knock out Bill? But she did. And he looked dead. You said so yourself. And then the girl came to. She probably wasn’t hit very hard, and she couldn’t have been hurt much if she chatted a few minutes later with the conductor about getting the Carnavon train. And she and Swiss Chard hopped off at Back Bay.”
“Now why would Swiss Chard knock her over the head one minute,” Dow said, “and then hop off with her at Back Bay Station the next? It doesn’t follow, Cassie.”
“They wanted to avoid any embarrassing explanations about Bill,” Cassie said. “You’ve got to admit that however they may have felt about each other previously, Bill certainly gave them a common bond. If Swiss Chard left both Bill and the girl stretched out on the floor, the girl would have told on Swiss Chard. Don’t you think so, Bill?”
Leonidas nodded.
“I’ve no doubt,” he said, “that the girl pointed out that angle. It was better to call a truce, and depart, which they did. I had more or less figured that out when Dow began ordering Carl to drive up unplowed streets, and my own house key fell out of his coat pocket.”
“You poor man!” Cassie said. “Biffed by Swiss Chard, and bumped by snow plows, and then that business of Dow and the limousine— You know, Dow, if that limousine episode’s your idea of subtlety, I begin to see how you got involved with Elsa Otis and her buck teeth! And then the shock of this house being different, and finding Swiss Chard wandering around your terrace in the arbor vitae, and then finding Medora Winthrop—”
“M’yes,” Leonidas said gently. “Quite so. I wondered if you’d forgotten that, Cassie. We found her at approximately three o’clock. Remember? It is now four. So, if you will be good enough to move away from that phone—”
Cassie didn’t budge.
“An hour,” she said coolly, “and we’ve found out heaps during it. You can’t say it hasn’t been a very profitable hour, Bill! We know this was some sinister plot of Medora’s, only it backfired. We know it was Rutherford’s ax. We know Swiss Chard is mixed up in it somewhere— Bill,” Cassie prodded him suddenly, “what time was she here? What time did you come here?”
“I arrived at nine-thirty,” Leonidas said. “And I saw the mousy woman a few minutes later.”
“What time-did you leave?”
“I haven’t,” Leonidas said. “I’m still here, Cassie.”
“You mean, you haven’t left this house since you came? Oh! Take this!” Cassie thrust a red-backed .grocery order tablet and a pencil into his hand. “Bill Shakespeare, you get to work! You take this and write down every single thing that’s happened since you got out of your cab this morning. Every single thing. Every person who’s been here, and where you were and what you did every minute of the time! Hurry, Bill!”
There was nothing but desperate urgency in her voice.
“Cassie,” Leonidas said, “I couldn’t. Any number of people came here. I couldn’t possibly make a chronological list, if that’s what you mean.”
“What he did doesn’t matter, Cassie,” Dow said. “We’ve got to check up on the key situation, and find out how many thousand people had access—”
“Particularly since noon, Bill,” Cassie
