“Well—yes,” agreed Higgins slowly. Something in his tone made me regard him sharply, thinking that he seemed quite reluctant and perplexed. However, as I say, I was tired and sleepy and had already more than enough problems before me, so I took my way upstairs.
On the way I picked up the Sunday paper. The supplement had the hospital pictures again, groups of nurses, a sort of history of St. Ann’s, stressing its long years of service but winding up with a lurid résumé of the past few days, which is the way of Sunday supplements but not unpleasant. I even found a picture of myself taken some years ago when pompadours and bosoms were in style. It was not a flattering picture and neither was the caption below it, which described me as one of St. Ann’s oldest nurses! Oldest in point of service, it went on to say tactfully, but the picture dated me indisputably and I flung the paper in the waste basket and tried to compose myself to sleep. And, I might add, did not succeed.
I found the noon service in the little chapel remarkably well attended, with prayer books in evidence and the nurses turning out en masse. The young rector preached a rather nice sermon about “Be ye not afraid,” which I considered a little too apropos for comfort and good taste.
Sunday is usually a rather festive day in St. Ann’s but that Sunday was anything but pleasant. No visitors were permitted, which made the patients fretful and hard to please. Moreover, we could not prevent an almost constant stream of morbidly inclined sightseers whose automobiles splashed along the muddy road in front of the hospital, and who stared through the fog and pointed with melancholy satisfaction.
I drifted uneasily about the dismal corridors for some time before I found Maida, ensconced unhappily in a cold window seat with a magazine which she was holding upside down.
She had not been to see Corole yet, she told me, and was dreading the visit that convention demanded. Wouldn’t I go with her? And though I had no relish for Corole’s company I found myself following the blue and scarlet of Maida’s nurse’s cape along that sodden, desolate path, holding my own cape tight around me and wishing I had brought an umbrella.
On the porch we met Dr. Hajek, just leaving.
“Bad weather,” he murmured as we passed him. His dark eyes slanted knowingly toward us; his face was very fresh and ruddy and his square teeth gleamed under that small black moustache.
Huldah opened the door, her cap very properly on her head this time but her face sullen.
We found Corole comfortably seated in what had been Dr. Letheny’s study, a warm fire glowing in the grate and the tea cart drawn up to the davenport and laden with her best silver tea service and some fascinating little French pastries that could only have come from Pierre’s, a very exclusive and high-priced sweet shop. I registered the impression that Corole was not wasting any time enjoying her newly augmented income, and gave my cape to Huldah. Corole and Maida were murmuring polite sentences and, recalling my promise to O’Leary, I followed Huldah to the hall.
“Miss Letheny feeling any better, Huldah?” I asked.
She gave me an expressive glance.
“H’m!” she grunted. “There’s not much mourning going on in this house! She—” she jerked her head toward the study—“dresses all up like a hussy every day and entertains callers. You know as well as I do that ain’t any way for a lady to do!”
“I noticed she was wearing that green silk thing with her bronze slippers the other day,” I remarked tentatively.
“She won’t wear them bronze pumps again, anyhow,” said Huldah in dour satisfaction. “She had to wear them out in the rain and now they are ruined.”
“Had to wear them out in the rain?”
“Yes, ma’am! The very afternoon we heard the bad news. Not an hour after them gentlemen was at the house to tell her about the doctor being dead. Nice gentlemen they was, too—them police officers.” She stopped, apparently musing on certain blue-coated figures. I had to prod her gently.
“Where was she going in such a hurry that she didn’t change her shoes?”
“Goodness knows! As soon as they had gone she grabbed a shawl and ran out the back door and across the alfalfa field. The last I saw she was scooting into the apple orchard and she didn’t get back for a full hour. It was raining, too, and she might have taken an umbrella at least. But not she! Catch her doing anything like a Christian!” concluded Huldah resentfully.
“Would you like some tea, miss?” she went on, after a moment’s brooding. “Some tea and one of my own cakes I made myself yesterday before she ordered them silly French things? Like as not poison, too, with all such coloured candies on top.”
“Indeed, I should, Huldah,” I said soothingly, though her cakes are, as a rule, sprinkled too liberally with caraway seeds. “And let me have a small anchovy sandwich,” I added, thereby winning her to a reluctant smile as she departed kitchenward.
I was not much wiser than I had been, and I really could not see that I could have questioned Huldah any further. Anyway it was likely she had told me all she knew, for Huldah’s natural disposition is to spread anything she hears.
I joined the other two in the study in time to catch a strained something in the atmosphere that made me pause involuntarily and look from one to the other. Maida was standing very stiff and straight, her eyes flaming like blue fire, her fingers clutched together until the knuckles and fingernails were white, and her whole attitude breathing defiance and anger and—yes, alarm. Corole was lying gracefully back in her chair, her creamy lace teagown falling softly away from her brown neck, the topaz on one hand catching light
