“Then you—Oh! So Mrs. Maslin knew that Ulrica was the criminal, and wanted to go to New York to drop the old man a hint!”
“She must have known, yes. She saw her on the roof getting rid of the rest of the evidence. You remember that she came out early from the pictures? She thought of giving Ulrica away, and then saw that to do so might involve considerable risk to herself, since no one could give her an alibi for the probable time of the murder, and she knew that she had lied to me about the time. She said she walked back that day, but she came by taxi.”
“Exasperating sort of position to be in, with all that money at stake.”
“Yes.” They had reached the guest-house, and Ferdinand went inside. George remained at the entrance with his employer.
“Odd the young lady should have found the right towel and that, and not used the bath-sheet, madam,” he observed.
“Clever brain, George. The towel came out of her aunt’s room. She knew the guest-house pretty well, you see. Had been to tea there before the murder, and knew her way about. I found that out from the cousin, Mary Maslin. All three of those children knew the guest-house. Her school tunic, dirty after climbing on the roof, she discarded, I expect, and wore Ursula’s tunic instead. All the school garments are named, but the two of them had the same initial, and if the cousin’s tunic seemed a little shorter than her own, Miss Bonnet, she knew, would not notice, and for other lessons she wore that long black overall.”
“You don’t think the young lady would do herself in in New York, madam? Has she got over that by now?”
“I don’t know, George. She may have gone past the stage at which the tendency to suicide is still active. There is very little doubt, I’m afraid, that unless she joins a religious community and establishes an unbreakable inhibition, she will end by killing herself in some fit of despair.”
“Well, there’s one thing come right in it, madam. The poor old girl who set the place on fire getting her mind back through you.”
“Yes. Her recovery is well advanced, George. I think the fire actually helped. It was a shock, and this time the shock was followed by the right reaction.”
“And the young person in the Orphanage you were interested in?”
“Bessie? Doing very well. I’m very pleased about Bessie. Annie, too, has a good place to go to when she leaves.”
“So all’s well that ends well, madam.”
“A Jesuitical statement, George, that I did not look for from you.”
—«»—«»—«»—
[scanned anonymously in a galaxy far far away]
[A 3S Release— v1, html]
[October 08, 2006]