“Tell your story without identifying Esther. Then you have told the police everything that you actually know. You can’t name Esther when you’re not sure it was she.”
“Esther — always Esther! Are you so fond of her?”
“Don’t you understand? If you accuse Esther without proof they can’t arrest her. But they’ll have to question her. If she’s guilty she’ll know from their questions that you identified her voice and not the man’s. She will tell the man and—”
“And I’ll be in danger, too?” Amy broke off short. “Lights! See? A car coming into the drive.”
“Quick!” Allan started to run toward the house. “Keep them in the living-room, whoever they are, while I call the police from my office.”
The car had halted. A slender figure in drifting black stepped into the light. Fine brows arched. Dark eyes turned in Amy’s direction. Esther was smiling. “Amy! Your mother was getting worried, so we came to look for you. I thought we might find you here.”
Another figure stepped out of the shadows. “I was ordered to look for you. Esther came along for the ride. Where’s Allan?”
Amy looked from the mockery in Esther’s eyes to the blandly impudent face of her brother. She took a certain satisfaction in her calm rejoinder: “Allan? Oh, he’s gone to call the police.”
“Police?” Peter’s eyes widened, but Esther’s narrowed. A clear indication of temperament, thought Amy — the one, impetuous; the other, calculating. Or could it be that Peter was surprised and that Esther was not?
“A man has been killed. Allan’s stableman. Allan wants us to wait for the police in the living-room.”
“But it has nothing to do with us!” cried Peter.
“It has to do with me,” retorted Amy. “I was with Allan when he found the body.”
The living-room was cheerful and commonplace — gray chintzes splashed with cherry-red against gray walls and carpet. The only exotic note was the cat that sprang forward to welcome them, biscuit-colored with the seal-brown face and paws of a Siamese.
“Oh, Houri!” Esther put out her hand. But Houri spat at the hand and fled to the top of a bookcase.
Allan walked into the room. “They’ll be here in a few minutes.”
“Can’t they see Amy tomorrow?” demanded Peter.
“There’s something only I can tell them.” Amy turned to Allan. “You’ll let them know that my story is vital evidence, won’t you?”
Allan nodded. “Of course. I’m going outside to wait for them.”
“Vital evidence?” Peter looked at Amy with irritation. “You’re dramatizing yourself. What vital evidence?”
“I’d rather not tell anyone but the police.”
Peter lit one cigarette after another. Amy, herself, was restless. Only Esther was outwardly serene.
Allan came in again and shut the door behind him. “The man in charge is Murchison. Assistant District Attorney. Rather like a German police dog. If he were defending your rights, you’d think he was a faithful, well-trained animal. But if you were the man whom he was defending someone’s rights against, you’d certainly think he was a vicious brute that ought to be shot.”
“And which are you?” Esther’s voice was cool.
Allan shrugged. “He hasn’t decided — yet. The body was found on my premises, but it looks like an accident and I can account for most of my time. I was making house visits between 5 and 7, when Sharpe must have died, but of course there are some time-gaps between each visit.”
“Isn’t that less suspicious than a watertight alibi?” suggested Peter.
“Perhaps. Especially as I had no motive for killing poor Lem Sharpe.”
“Lem Sharpe!” Peter was startled. “The man who cuts our lawn?” He turned to Amy: “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I didn’t know that you knew the man at all,” returned Amy.
“Everybody knows Sharpe,” exclaimed Esther. “He’s employed by Neilson and Eddington, the landscape gardeners. They take care of all the lawns and hedges around here on a weekly basis.”
Peter was smiling for the first time since he had entered the room. “The D.A. was just looking for excitement,” he said comfortably. “No one would kill an inoffensive chap like Sharpe.”
Amy spoke quietly: “I think he was murdered.”
“Why?” Peter’s smile vanished.
The door opened. The man who came into the room did have the long-legged lope of a police dog. The eyes, too — a light hazel that looked shallow and flat, with a small, hard core of black pupil. “Miss Corbett? Dr. Galt says there is something you want to tell me. Let’s have it.”
Amy looked at him in astonishment. Witnesses with vital information were always interviewed alone so others could not adjust their testimony to suit. “Mr. Murchison, I would rather talk to you privately.”
She saw a trace of amusement under the hard surface of his eyes. She had been wrong to trust Allan as go-between. Unintentionally or not, he had given Murchison an idea that her evidence was not vital at all.
Esther’s high, cool voice cut the silence: “Miss Corbett is young and inexperienced, Mr. Murchison. The shock of discovering this body has brought her to the edge of hysteria. Don’t you agree that at least one of us, I or her brother, should be present while you question her?”
“Well, Miss Corbett?” Murchison was indifferent.
Amy felt the color hot in her cheeks. Esther’s gentle patronage spurred her to recklessness. “All right. What I have to say concerns Mrs. Gregory.”
Once or twice Amy, herself, had doubted her identification of Esther as the woman whose voice she had overheard. Now all doubt died. In the first instant of shock a look flashed across Esther’s face that startled even Amy. A sudden, taut thinning of the lips, a sudden, wide blazing of the eyes, and that beautiful face became a tortured mask, a specter from the nightmare side of the human soul, glancing to the surface for the moment, then, as swiftly, submerged.
The men did not see it. They were all looking at Amy, herself.
Esther’s voice was as calmly modulated as ever: “I have no idea what you are talking about, Amy.”
“Sis!” Peter’s voice was harsh. “If you’re dramatizing yourself again—!”
“Trust a brother to give you a good send-off!” Amy turned to Allan: “Tell Mr. Murchison: Do I dramatize myself? And do I stick to facts?”
Allan looked at Peter, then at Amy, with embarrassment. “You try to be truthful. You are imaginative, but — you never distort facts knowingly.”
Amy had expected more from Allan. She began to feel as if she were struggling in an invisible net, fine, clinging, steely as a spider’s web. She told her tale badly, her very voice faltering, a witness against her.
Murchison was skeptical. “You understand that this is a very serious thing, if it is true? In effect, you are accusing Mrs. Gregory of plotting with a lover to kill her husband. But you have no evidence and no other witness to corroborate your statement.”
“There was a witness — Sharpe. Now he is dead. It can’t be coincidence!”
Peter broke in angrily: “See here, Murchison. My sister has always been erratic. Ask my mother if you don’t believe me! Amy is what they used to call a tomboy, and she has always neglected our mother, who is a very feminine person, herself. Today Amy comes down here and finds Esther Gregory taking her place with Mother, more like a daughter than Amy, herself, ever was. It’s easy to see how her sense of guilt would sharpen her jealousy of Esther. So when she overhears this conversation, probably a radio play, she imagines that she recognizes the woman’s voice as Esther’s.”