The speculative gaze, the steady brooding . . . Torrant looked back at that and then at the whitened face across the room. “Mrs. Mallow—”
“No, let me finish. I asked him about Annabelle’s husband, and little by little he let me guess at part of the truth. I think he enjoyed having me find out what kind of character I’d assumed. He never quite said as much, but,” said Louise, gazing steadily at Torrant, “whatever she did to Martin Fennister was Simeon’s idea. Annabelle could carry things out, once she’d been told, but she had to be told.”
Torrant stayed still with an effort. There was no point in charging out into the night to look for Simeon; the police were already in motion. He listened instead to what Louise Mallow was saying: that Simeon had called her up one afternoon to inquire about who a Mrs. Partridge was, that, taken off guard, she had told him. He hadn’t seemed to attach any importance to it, but he had told Louise that he wanted to talk to her and would she please be in at about six-thirty.
An alibi for her for afterwards, of course, although she hadn’t known that then. She couldn’t stay in, she couldn’t bear the thought of a visit from Simeon. She had library books out and that was an excuse; she called a taxi, wandered blankly around among the stacks for a time and then came home. It was after seven o’clock when Paulette Kirby telephoned her.
Louise Mallow’s voice went on; Torrant’s mind began to assemble details he had had all along. Mrs. Kirby’s penchant for liquor, and her somewhat haggard air in the upper hall of this house on the evening after Mrs. Partridge’s death. Her edginess when he had inquired about Simeon’s visit the night before, her new-leaf severity of a few hours ago—and the telephone call which Simeon had returned while Torrant listened from the landing above. ‘Ten minutes, fifteen at the outside,’ he had said, and ‘Not at all, it happens to—’ It happens to everybody, now and then?
“—alanol,” Louise Mallow was saying tiredly. “I know he had it because he offered it to me once. Alanol and liquor make a complete blank, don’t they? So that he could have taken Mrs. Kirby’s car and gone to the station to watch for Mrs. Partridge and then come back after he’d—done it, and she’d never have known he was gone. I remember that she sounded quite groggy, and she went on apologizing for having kept Simeon—I suppose he made her call when he got back, so that I couldn’t connect him with Mrs. Partridge. I suppose she enjoyed calling, too. She’s always been curious about me, X think she sensed something wrong because she attached herself to me right after the accident and wouldn’t be shaken off. I couldn’t afford to be rude to her although,” said Louise wearily, “Mrs. Kirby is really a dreadful woman.”
Torrant said into the silence, “If she was suspicious, was there anything for her to find in the attic? Photographs, things like that?”
Louise Mallow shook her head. “Mrs. Kirby was after her husband’s family silver and some heirloom things—to pawn, I suppose. When he went to prison he stored it with the people who used to own this house, and when he came out he either forgot about it or didn’t care. Mrs. Kirby explained to me that it was hers, but it obviously wouldn’t be here if it were.”
Torrant reflected that he ought to have known that; it wasn’t likely that the owner of one of the oldest houses in Chauncy would have harbored the personal belongings of a newcomer who, Mrs. Judd had told him, the town distrusted. Her husband’s, yes, but not hers.”
Between silence and soreness, Maria’s voice sounded difficult and not her own. “Then everything you told me last night—”
‘”—happened,” Louise said, “but not quite that way.” She went to the window and came back again. “Simeon was afraid you’d recognize me if you stayed here, and he told me to get rid of you or he would. So I offered you money and you refused it, and even though I was worried I was—pleased, I guess, and I wanted you to stay for tea. I forgot who I was supposed to be for the moment, and I was appalled when Mr. Torrant snatched your hand away like that. So nothing was accomplished at all, and the next time I had to do it.”
Briefly, she broke frightening fancy down into fact; the germ of truth was there but that was all. With a hunting lodge rented every year Gerald had taught her to shoot, riding over her fear of guns and her reluctance to kill anything, because with clients to entertain she might be useful to help make up a hunting party. In spite of all his instruction she was afraid of the woods and terrified of getting lost, and in a moment of panic her rifle had gone off, narrowly missing Gerald.
As for the sleeping pills, Gerald had come in late one night, fumblingly drunk, and started to take them by mistake—from a different bottle on a different shelf. The same was true of his seizure after the lobster; he had been drinking a great deal i and his stomach had finally revolted, with the severity of the j spasm affecting his heart.
“I tried to run away once, even before I knew exactly j what Annabelle and Simeon had done between them,” said Louise, and her eyes met Torrant’s and she smiled wryly. . “When I faced the fact that your Martin had been murdered, I and that Simeon had killed Mrs. Partridge so that she couldn’t expose me, the money didn’t matter any more. Nothing did, except to get away and inform on Simeon from some safe I anonymous distance. If,” said Louise, and glanced at the black ] windows and shivered again, “there is such a
