“She didn’t need one when she was dealing with a woman. She was remarkably strong. She did admit to Sands that she’d been in some tennis finals. And it required considerable strength to climb down those sheets and up again. That trick automatically eliminated your mother and Aspasia. It also eliminated Jackson, but for a different reason. Jackson’s room is on the third floor and his using a bathroom on the second floor would have been too foolhardy.
“When Dinah threw the money into the fireplace she performed the one act that could have saved her life. Jane was lost to everything but the necessity of rescuing the money. The sight of it burning drove her insane.”
“Are you feeling better, Mrs. Revel?” Sands asked.
“Much better, thanks. Where is George?”
“He’s waiting in the hall. I’m leaving town tomorrow. I decided to see you first.”
“Why?”
Sands smiled. “I thought I’d give you hell.”
“I don’t care,” Dinah said. “I don’t care about anything now that my hair’s growing in.”
“Did you think I wasn’t aware that it was Miss Stevens?”
“She’s fooled a lot of people. When did you become aware?”
“After Sammy Twists death,” Sands said. “Before that I had only a list of suspicious questions: why didn’t she taste the eyedrops in the water she drank? I’ve experimented and found the taste very strong. Why was atropine used at all? Dr. Prye supplied the answer to this — atropine has a perfect antidote. Why was the poison administered so that its effects began at the church in a crowd of people with a hospital just around the comer? Why was she so completely ignorant of her brother’s affairs though they lived together? After Sammy’s death a number of other things cropped up in addition to the conclusive fact of the telephone call.”
“Prye told me of that,” Dinah said.
“There were the sheets, a typically female inspiration. There was her attitude toward you: she took too much from you, it wasn’t the natural reaction.”
“She required some wearing down,” Dinah said.
“And how did you know she did it?”
Dinah smiled. “I knew what I’d have done to Duncan if I’d been in her shoes, and I judged accordingly.”
“There’s her husband going in again,” Miss Tomson said. “Look.”
“It’s not her husband,” Miss Hearst replied. “They’re divorced. Isn’t that romantic?”
“Divorced? Well, I never! A disgrace, I call it, him hanging around all the time.”
“That’s love for you.”
“I don’t care what you call it, it’s a disgrace!”
“You wouldn’t know,” Miss Hearst said dreamily.
“Nora.”
“Yes, Mother.”
“Nora, I bought a copy of Emily Post’s Etiquette today. I’m afraid you can’t be married decently for some time.”
“Can’t I?”
“She says not,” Mrs. Shane sighed. “A small wedding, perhaps. A large one, no. I don’t want to hurry you, of course—”
“Mother, you’re an old fraud. You’re dying to get rid of me.”
“I should like to get settled. And those fifteen coffee—”
“Send them back, darling. Paul and I were married yesterday at the City Hall.”
“Dear heaven,” Mrs. Shane said piously.
There was fog again, a wall of fog built around the city, breaking the wind, muffling the gloomy wail of the foghorn from the lake.
As Sands walked a damp leaf fluttered against his coat sleeve and clung to it. As if I were Us last hope for life, Sands thought.
He jerked his arm, and the leaf fell drunkenly to the pavement and lay stained red with the blood of autumn and smudged with soot.
Indignity, Sands thought, the death of anything is an indignity.
He walked on, swinging his arms savagely through the fog.