Haggard went out to get the car, brought it around to the front door. Vera came out, threw Casement a careless “You know what to do,” and got in. They drove off.
Almost before they were out of sight down the long tree-lined street, he’d got up and gone inside. Not hurriedly or furtively, simply as though he had something to do that couldn’t be postponed any longer.
He stayed in there a long time. She could hear him first in one room, then in another. He seemed to go through the entire house upstairs and down while he was about it. She could hear a drawer slide open from time to time, or a desk-flap being let down. If it hadn’t been for that peculiar, inexplicable confidence with which he seemed to inspire her, she might have thought him a burglar who had taken the job just for an opportunity to ransack the house in its owners’ absence. Somehow the idea never occurred to her.
He came back outside again finally, after almost an hour, shaking his head slightly to himself. He sat down beside her, reached into his inside pocket, took out a little oblong book — a pocket dictionary.
“You and I have got to find some way of getting beyond yes and no,” he murmured. “I’d like to talk to you. That’s why I wangled this job.”
He glanced out between the porch posts, across the front lawn, up and down the sunny street. There was no one in sight. He took something from his vest pocket. Janet Miller thought it was a watch for a minute, until she saw that it was shield-shaped, not round. It had the State seal engraved on it. He let her see it, then put it away again. “I’m a detective,” he said. “I came up here and examined the premises immediately after it happened, just in the line of duty. Mrs. Haggard, as I at first reconstructed it, was awakened by the gas, managed to stagger down to the floor below, break the glass pane in the front door, then get over to the phone to try and call for help. She only had strength left to take the receiver off, then fell down with it and was found there on the floor by the telephone, overcome.
“However, I happened to question the switchboard operator who had sent in the alarm, and she insisted it was the other way around. She distinctly heard the crash of glass, over the open wire, after the receiver was already off. That made it a little hard to understand. That was a plate-glass inset in that door, not just thin window glass. She had to swing a heavy andiron at it to shatter it. Now if a person is not even strong enough to whisper ‘Help’ over the phone, how in the world is she able to crash out a solid square of plate glass?
“Furthermore, once she was at the door why did she turn around and go all the way back to the phone, which was already disconnected, and fall down there? There is a considerable length of hall between the two. It wasn’t at the door she was found, you understand, it was at the phone.
“As peculiar as that struck me, I think I would have let it go by, but I visited the hospital while she was there being treated and asked to see her things. The light satin bedroom slippers she’d had on were discolored around the edges from dew, and I found traces of moist earth and a blade of grass adhering to their soles. She’d been outside the house before she was overcome, then went in again, closed the door after her, and smashed the glass panel in it from the inside.
“Then on top of all that, the usual neighborhood gossip has begun to drift in to us, about how soon afterwards she and Haggard were married. Even an anonymous letter or two. I tell you all this because, although this is going to be one of the toughest things I’ve ever come up against, I think you may be able to help me before we’re through.”
She could hardly breathe. The flame leaped heavenward and she blinked her eyes — twice — as rapidly as she could.
“Then there is something you can tell me about it? Good. Well, the main thing I want to know is: did he lose his life accidentally or not?”
No!
He gave her a long look. But she could see there was really no surprise in it, only confirmation. He thumbed the pocket dictionary, put his thumbnail below a word, held it up to her.
“Murder,” it read.
Yes.
“By his wife?” His mouth was tightening up a little.
She stopped and thought a minute. If she once set him off on a false scent, or on an only partially correct scent, which was just as bad, there might be no possible way for her to correct him later.
She blinked once. Then immediately afterwards she blinked twice.
“Yes and no?” he said. “What do you mean by ...?” Then he got it! He was turning out to be a smart young man, this ally of hers, this Casement. “His wife and somebody else?”
Yes.
“Haggard and your son’s wife then, of course.”
Yes.
“But—” he said uncertainly. “She was overcome herself.”
No.
“She wasn’t overcome?”
No.
“But I’ve seen the report of the ambulance doctor who treated her. I’ve spoken to him. She was taken to the hospital.”
They wasted the rest of the morning over that. She wasn’t particularly interested in convincing him that Vera’s gas poisoning had been feigned — as a matter of fact, it had only been partially so — but she was vitally interested in keeping him from going past that point, in order to try to bring the gas masks into it. Once he did, she might never again be able to make him understand what method had been used.
They went at it again in the afternoon, on the back porch. “There’s something there that seems to be holding us up. How is it you’re so sure she wasn’t overcome? You were overcome yourself— Sorry, I forgot, I can only ask you questions that shape to a yes or no answer.”
He was plainly stumped for a while. Took out some papers from his pocket, reports or jotted notes of some kind, and pored over them for a few minutes.
“He and she were occupying that same room, up there, that the Haggards are using now. You insist she wasn’t overcome by the gas. Oh, I see what you mean — she saved herself by doing what I suspected from the looks of those bedroom slippers, stayed outside while the gas was escaping, came back inside again after it had killed your son, avoiding most of its effects in that way. Is that right?”
No.
“She didn’t save herself in that way?”
No.
“Did she stay in another room upstairs, with the windows open?”
No.
He was plainly confounded. “She didn’t stay in the same room with him, the back bedroom, the whole time the gas was escaping?”
Yes.
He riffled his hair distractedly. She focused her eyes downward on the pocket dictionary he still held in his hand, glared at it as though it were her worst enemy.
Finally he translated the look. “Something in there. Yes, but what word in it?” he asked helplessly.
Why didn’t he open it? If he didn’t hurry up and open it, he’d lose the thread of the conversation that had immediately preceded her inspiration. She didn’t even know whether the word was in there. If it was, she was counting on alphabetical progression...
“Well, we’ll get it if it takes all week. She stayed right in the bedroom with him while he was asphyxiated. She wasn’t harmed, you insist, and there’s some word in here you want. Something about bedrooms?”
No.
“Something about windows?”
No.
“Something about the gas itself?”
Yes! He almost tore the little book in half to get to the G’s.
“Gas. We’ll take it from there on, all right?”
Instead of blinking, for once, she shut her eyes.
She was saying a prayer.
He started to run his finger down the page, querying her as he went. “Gaseous?” No. “Gastric?” No. “Gastronomy?” No. Suddenly he stopped. He’d seen it himself, automatically; she could tell by the flash of enlightenment that lit up his face.