‘I presume Miss Mack will be down soon,’ I volunteered. ‘If you wish, however, I will tell her –’
‘That will hardly be necessary. But – you are quite sure – a letter?’
‘Quite sure,’ I returned, somewhat impatiently.
And then, without warning, her hands darted to her head, and she swayed forward. I caught her in my arms with a side-view of Sheriff Peddicord staring, open-mouthed.
‘Get her maid!’ I gasped.
The sheriff roused into belated action. As he took a cumbersome step toward the nearest door, it opened suddenly. A gaunt, middle-aged woman, in a crisp white apron, digested the situation with cold, grey eyes. Without a word, she caught Muriel Jansen in her arms.
‘She has fainted,’ I said rather vaguely. ‘Can I help you?’
The other paused with her burden.
‘When I need you, I’ll ask you!’ she snapped, and banged the door in our faces.
In the wake of Sheriff Peddicord, I descended the stairs. A dozen question marks were spinning through my brain. Why had Muriel Jansen fainted? Why had the mention of Wendell Marsh’s letter left such an atmosphere of bewildered doubt? Why had the dragon-like maid – for such I divined her to be – faced us with such hostility? The undercurrent of hidden secrets in the dim, silent house seemed suddenly intensified.
With a vague wish for fresh air and the sun on the grass, I sought the front veranda, leaving the sheriff in the hall, mopping his face with his red handkerchief.
A carefully tended yard of generous distances stretched an inviting expanse of graded lawn before me. Evidently Wendell Marsh had provided a discreet distance between himself and his neighbours. The advance guard of a morbid crowd was already shuffling about the gate. I knew that it would not be long, too, before the press-siege would begin.
I could picture frantic city editors pitchforking their star men New Jerseyward. I smiled at the thought. The Bugle, the slave-driver that presided over my own financial destinies, was assured of a generous ‘beat’ in advance. The next train from New York was not due until late afternoon.
From the staring line about the gate, the figure of a well-set-up young man in blue serge detached itself with swinging step.
‘A reporter?’ I breathed, incredulous.
With a glance at me, he ascended the steps, and paused at the door, awaiting an answer to his bell. My stealthy glances failed to place him among the ‘stars’ of New York newspaperdom. Perhaps he was a local correspondent. With smug expectancy, I awaited his discomfiture when Peters received his card. And then I rubbed my eyes. Peters was stepping back from the door, and the other was following him with every suggestion of assurance.
I was still gasping when a maid, broom in hand, zigzagged toward my end of the veranda. She smiled at me with a pair of friendly black eyes.
‘Are you a detective?’
‘Why?’ I parried.
She drew her broom idly across the floor.
‘I – I always thought detectives different from other people.’
She sent a rivulet of dust through the railing, with a side glance still in my direction.
‘Oh, you will find them human enough,’ I laughed, ‘outside of detective stories!’
She pondered my reply doubtfully.
‘I thought it about time Mr Truxton was appearing!’ she ventured suddenly.
‘Mr Truxton?’
‘He’s the man that just came – Mr Homer Truxton. Miss Jansen is going to marry him!’
A light broke through my fog.
‘Then he is not a reporter?’
‘Mr Truxton? He’s a lawyer.’ The broom continued its dilatory course. ‘Mr Marsh didn’t like him – so they say!’
I stepped back, smoothing my skirts. I have learned the cardinal rule of Madelyn never to pretend too great an interest in the gossip of a servant.
The maid was mechanically shaking out a rug.
‘For my part, I always thought Mr Truxton far and away the pick of Miss Jansen’s two steadies. I never could understand what she could see in Dr Dench! Why, he’s old enough to be her –’
In the doorway, Sheriff Peddicord’s bulky figure beckoned.
‘Don’t you reckon as how it’s about time we were going back to Miss Mack?’ he whispered.
‘Perhaps,’ I assented rather reluctantly.
From the shadows of the hall, the sheriff’s sound eye fixed itself on me belligerently.
‘I say, what I would like to know is what became of that there other man!’
As we paused on the second landing the well-set-up figure of Mr Homer Truxton was bending toward a partially opened door. Beyond his shoulder, I caught a fleeting glimpse of a pale face under a border of rumpled dull-gold hair. Evidently Muriel Jansen had recovered from her faint. The door closed abruptly, but not before I had seen that her eyes were red with weeping.
Madelyn was sunk into a red-backed chair before a huge, flat-top desk in the corner of the library, a stack of Wendell Marsh’s red-bound books, from a wheel-cabinet at her side, bulked before her. She finished the page she was reading – a page marked with a broad blue pencil – without a hint that she had heard us enter.
Sheriff Peddicord stared across at her with a disappointment that was almost ludicrous. Evidently Madelyn was falling short of his conception of the approved attitudes for a celebrated detective!
‘Are you a student of Elizabethan literature, Sheriff?’ she asked suddenly.
The sheriff gurgled weakly.
‘If you are, I am quite sure you will be interested in Mr Marsh’s collection. It is the most thorough on the subject that I have ever seen. For instance, here is a volume on the inner court life of Elizabeth – perhaps you would like me to read you this random passage?’
The sheriff drew himself up with more dignity than I thought he possessed.
‘We are investigating a crime, Miss Mack!’
Madelyn closed the book with a sigh.
‘So we are! May I ask what is your report from the butler?’
‘Mr Marsh did not have cherry pie for dinner last night!’ the sheriff snapped.
‘You are quite confident?’
And then abruptly the purport of the question flashed to me.
‘Why, Mr Marsh, himself, mentioned the fact in
