That was why she had looked so distracted in this same hall last night; she had been searching for the written message, not trusting herself to have its contents right and hoping to find it in time. And this was how the bottom had fallen out of his arrangements for secrecy, because Simeon had a room in the house and Mrs. Kirby had called.
Torrant was suddenly and ragingly angry at this timid little woman who, afraid of her own shadow, had had a hand in the drowning of Mrs. Partridge. When she said, “Do you think I ought to tell the police?” he swung on her; he said icily, “I wouldn’t if I were you.”
Halfway up the stairs he became aware that she was still standing transfixed in the hall, harried and more frightened than ever. He had tried to rub off some of his own bitterness, he had tried to haunt Mrs. Judd as he himself was haunted, and it wouldn’t work. Mrs. Partridge was his responsibility, no matter what unwitting tools had lain along the way. He turned and said with an effort at kindness, “If the police want to know, Mrs. Judd, they’ll ask. Why don’t you leave it at that?” and went on up to his room.
The police. Of course they would want to know why he had asked Mrs. Partridge to come back to Chauncy, and his interest in the Mallow affair would come out in the open. They had looked at that once and called it accident, and— he knew country police—their backs would be up instantly at the suggestion that there had been any stone left unturned. Annabelle Blair would be twice exonerated, and the weapon he had hoped to use on Martin’s behalf would be useless.
Unless, of course, Annabelle could be placed anywhere near Willet’s Pond last night.
Torrant realized with a sense of shock that he knew almost no details of this death which he had brought about. He didn’t know, for instance, whether Mrs. Partridge’s purse had been recovered. There hadn’t been time to wire money for the trip; she had said she could borrow it from her sister in Lynnfield. Was it possible—his mind turned bleakly away from the thought—that she hadn’t had taxi fare after all?
God . . . but wait and see.
Mrs. Watts would know by now everything that there was to know. Mrs. Watts, who had given him her sister’s address so reluctantly, and who had to be faced sooner or later.
Torrant made himself a drink before he left, grimly and without pleasure. It crossed his mind that Mrs. Partridge, in spite of all her doubts over the telephone, had known something that would be the undoing of Annabelle Blair; had held, very possibly, the key to that bizarre will and the fortuitous death of Louise and Gerald Mallow. And that that was, on this gray morning when her own body had been recovered from under the ice, a mockery of triumph.
There was a police car parked outside Mrs. Watts’ small yellow house.
Torrant gave it a braced look; better here, he thought, than Mrs. Judd’s. He walked up the short path between thrusting lilac branches, knocked, and was presently answered at the door by a tall boy with a forelock, whom he remembered having been introduced to as a nephew. The boy stood silently aside and Torrant entered the tiny front hall with a murmured apology.
He hadn’t noticed his surroundings on his previous visit here. Linoleum-treaded stairs rose directly ahead of him, on his right the varnished brown door of the kitchen was closing after the boy who had let him in. To his left, in what was obviously the parlor, a low murmur of voices only brushed the hush, the peculiar halted life of a house just visited by shock.
Torrant turned quietly into the partly open doorway. Among a profusion of piecrust tables and stiff wing chairs and whatnots and potted plants, Mrs. Watts and a policeman sat in diminishing profile. They evidently assumed that the boy had dispatched the caller, because neither head turned.
The policeman said with an air of nearing the end of his routine, “Your sister hadn’t been living here in town, Mrs. Watts?”
“No, not for over a month. Another sister of mine in Connecticut lest her husband, and Sarah went to help out and decided to stay.”
Some disturbance of light or a breaking of pattern caught her attention then; she turned her head and saw Torrant in the doorway. He thought with a faint and unreasonable surprise that she looked exactly the same: mournful melted-candle face, lightless dark eyes, folded lips and hands as rigid as though she were sitting for her portrait.
The single moment before she moved seemed like the calm before hysterics, or at the very least a pointing finger and a shrieked accusation. Torrant braced himself, waiting, and Mrs. Watts said with reluctance, “Oh, Mr. Torrant,” and when the policeman stood up inquiringly, “This is Sergeant Hilary.”
Mechanical greetings followed. The sergeant resumed his seat. Torrant sat down uninvited, reflecting bleakly that Mrs. Watts was building up to her own moment of triumph.
Sergeant Hilary said sympathetically, “It’s pretty clear what happened, I guess, Mrs. Watts. Your sister was walking past the pond and it’s pretty dark up there, she didn’t realize how slippery it was. Maybe if she hadn’t struck her head when she fell . . .” He stopped, shrugging.
A grandfather clock in the corner behind Mrs. Watts suspended its ticking, groaned faintly and began to strike. Sergeant Hilary waited for it to conclude as deferentially as though it were another person. He said, “There was a return ticket to Lynnfield and thirty dollars in cash in Mrs. Partridge’s bag. She was on her way here for a visit, was she?”
Torrant’s fingers stopped on his unlit cigarette.
His first amazement at the sergeant’s credulity was gone; looked at in one light, the circumstances of Mrs. Partridge’s death dovetailed neatly into accident. Given
