“What has that got to do with it, Cassie?” Dow said. “Can’t you stick to one point long enough—”
“You goon!” Cassie said. “You two goons! Medora Winthrop was alive when we passed by the Dalton Auditorium just before noon! I saw her going in!”
“That’s impossible,” Dow said promptly. “You just saw someone with the same sort of hat, or coat. You couldn’t have seen her. If Bill’s been here all day—”
“I saw her,” Cassie said. “I was just going to point her out to you, and your rear-tire chain snapped again. Remember? Right on the corner by the A. and P. And by the time you got it fixed, seeing Medora had slipped my mind. But she was alive, and going into the auditorium just before noon.”
“Now look here, Cass,” Dow said, “Bill says he came here at nine-thirty, and he’s been here all day long! She simply couldn’t have been going into the auditorium at noon! She couldn’t have been alive then. That would mean that she’d been killed in this house since Bill came!”
“Yes, yes, yes!” Cassie said. “That’s why I said he had to write everything down. My, but you are stupid!”
“How could she have been killed here, in this house,” Dow demanded, “without Bill’s knowing it? She must have been here since before he came. Of course she was. She must have been here since last night, or early this morning. Don’t you think Bill would have known, if people were being murdered in his own house?”
“Bill,” Cassie said, “what did you do from noon on, till we came?”
“I slept,” Leonidas said slowly. “Upstairs in my own room, on my own spool bed. I slept there from a few minutes after twelve, after Estelle and that lady judge left, until you. two started war-whooping and waked me up.”
“There,” Cassie said, “that settles it. ‘Dalton Police Chief’s Pickax Death Weapon in Slaying of Wealthy Eccentric. Insert: Police Chief’s Intimate Friend, Leonidas Shakespeare-in-brackets Witherall, Who Claims to Have Slept During Brutal Murder.’ “
Leonidas broke the little silence that followed.
“M’yes,” he said. “M’yes. I have just been the recipient of a psychic message from my old friend the Maharajah. He says, picturesquely, ‘He who is in the grasp of the cobra can smile at the lightning’s forked tongue/ But before we smile to any extent, let us make several very prompt investigations. Cassie, you telephone Miss Winthrop’s house, find out when she left it, and where her companion, Miss Chard, is at the moment. Can you do that?”
Cassie picked up the phone.
“Easy. I’ll be Mrs. Bledsoe, the Christmas card woman. Medora always got Christmas cards from her.”
“Not in March,” Leonidas pointed out.
“Mrs. Bledsoe starts selling cards again the first day of January,” Cassie said. “I’ll ask if Miss Winthrop’s appointment for noon slipped her mind. That’s a good question, because appointments always slipped Medora’s mind. Then I’ll ask what time she left. Miss Winthrop’s residence? Mrs. Bledsoe calling. No, Bledsoe. The card one. Can you tell me—”
It was a lengthy conversation, punctuated by bursts of frenzied spelling on Cassie’s part.
“That butler,” she said as she replaced the receiver, “ought to have one of those things on his ear. He’s the deafest old haddock— She left with Miss Chard, Bill, on the eleven-thirty Birch Hill bus for Dalton Centre. He sounded very positive about it, and he ought to know. That bus stops right outside her door. She had it put in, just for her.”
“The door?” Leonidas asked.
“No, the bus stop. She bought up all the stock in the bus company, and they had to put the stop in. Bill, she and Chard left together at eleven-thirty to go to that lecture-luncheon. They’re both expected home for dinner. That means—”
“That Miss Chard is at large,” Leonidas said. “M’yes. Cassie, call headquarters and ask Feeny outright if Rutherford really is on the track of something vital to the department’s well being, and how long it’s going to take, and when he’ll return.”
Cassie’s eyes were shining when she hung up after her call to Feeny.
“Yes! He said, yes! And he didn’t know how long, but probably not very. Rutherford is to call here the minute he returns. There, that’s all settled. First of all we’d better find Swiss Chard—”
“Gran,” Jock said, “Uncle Root is not going to like this. But I’ve just been thinking—suppose I hadn’t come right here from school. Suppose I hadn’t come yet. Would you have opened that door downstairs, Bill?”
Leonidas shook his head.
“That is a point which the Maharajah and I were just mulling over,” he said. “How did you come, by bus?”
Jock looked sideways at his grandmother.
“I hopped a pung,” he said. “But it was perfectly safe, Gran. Really. And I’m sure no one saw me under the blanket. Anyway, Uncle Rutherford didn’t, and that’s all that matters. I could go back to the Adamses, Gran. They wanted me to finish the boat tonight.”
Cassie nodded vigorously. “I’ll call Sally Adams and ask her if she could bear the thought of having you stay with Tim another night— Where can you say you’ve been since school?”
“If they happen to ask, I’ll say I went to the library after swimming. I often do.”
“Fine. Now, Dow’ll bundle you up in a rug and take you out to the car, so nobody’ll see you leaving here,” Cassie said. “Dow can let you off at the Adamses’ door, and you can say he gave you a lift. Be sure and remember, darling, you’ve just never been here this afternoon, at all! So Bill hasn’t opened that door downstairs. And it can’t be opened until you officially come. You won’t have to stay away long, Jock. Now, your pajamas—”
Cassie finally settled the details of Jock’s clean underwear and toothbrush, and he was bundled off.
“Poor lamb,” Cassie said, as she and Leonidas watched Dow drive away. “He never wanted to do anything less. But it’s best all around that he isn’t
