But her glance at the big sergeant was coldly courteous. “Yes? What is it, please?”
“I’m going to have to ask you,” said the detective, “to come down to police headquarters with me.”
Lutetia stirred, ever so slightly. Her husband blinked. Dane moved forward angrily: “What’s this all about, Sergeant? Why do you want to take my mother — of all people! — down to headquarters?”
“Because I have to book her,” the sergeant said impassively, “on a charge of suspicion of the murder of Sheila Grey.”
III
The Third Side
Lutetia
There was confusion. Dane kept running around looking for the lawyers, who had left the courtroom. Ashton interposed his formidable body between his wife and the sergeant as if he expected an assault. Judy looked about wildly for Dane. Reporters, catching the drama, were beginning to converge on the group with everything flapping. The sergeant said, “I have to ask you to step out of the way, Mr. McKell. This’ll turn into a mob scene if you don’t let me get her out of here quick.”
Detective Mack had materialized; he was reaching around Ashton to get at Lutetia.
Somehow they managed to shoulder their way through the shouting newsmen.
“I’m sorry, Sergeant,” growled Ashton, “but we’re going down to headquarters all together.”
“You can’t do that, Mr. McKell.”
“Can’t we?”
“There isn’t room in the car—”
“There is in mine.”
“Look, men,” roared the sergeant, “you’ll get your stories later. Mack, hold these croakers off, will you? Let us through!”
“Where’s Dane?”
“Here he is, Mr. McKell!” Judy screamed.
“They’d already left the building.” Dane elbowed his way through. “I’ve phoned their offices.”
“Get out of the way, will you?”
They drove up to police headquarters from the courthouse in the McKell Continental, Velie trying visibly to smooth his feathers. In the lobby he said to the McKells and Judy, “I’m sorry, but you people will have to wait here.”
“Either we all go,” Ashton retorted, “or we all wait until my lawyers get here.”
“That’s not the way we do things, Mr. McKell. Your wife is under arrest—”
Lutetia was standing beside her husband, turned to stone down to the marbled fingers clutching his arm. Dane thought she was going to faint, and he jumped forward to support her on the other side; but she did not. He thought: She’s pretending she isn’t here, that this is all a bad dream. He was not surprised to see her shut her eyes like a child. Then he felt himself shouldered aside by Judy, who slipped her hand into the older woman’s, squeezing it, murmuring something. But Lutetia did not respond.
“Mr. McKell, you going to stand aside?” bellowed the sergeant.
“I am not,” said Ashton. “I know of no state or municipal law forbidding the family and attorneys of an arrested person to be present during the preliminary questioning by the authorities. Unless you allow it, Sergeant, I’m going to insist that my wife be taken before a magistrate at once — you know as well as I that that’s her right until she’s formally charged. Meanwhile, please let us have some place to sit down.”
Sergeant Velie muttered, “Okay. Come on,” and they trooped after him and into Inspector Queen’s office, where he engaged in some hasty, red-eared, whispered explanations. Meanwhile, Ashton handed his wife into a comfortable chair and said to Dane, “Better tell Ramon where we are, so he can tell O’Brien and Heaton when they get here.”
Dane hurried back downstairs. When he returned, he found Inspector Queen talking quietly to Lutetia, with Sergeant Velie standing stormily by. It seemed that Ashton had made a dicker with the Inspector; in return for being allowed to be present during Lutetia’s preliminary questioning, Ashton had agreed not to insist on waiting for the lawyers. Inspector Queen seemed in complete charge of the case now. This, then, was why he had visited the courtroom, what all the whispering and messages at the district attorney’s table had been about.
But why was his mother being held in the murder for which his father had just been acquitted? Dane strained to find out.
“Mrs. McKell, this is as painful to me as it is to you,” the Inspector was saying. “All you have to do is answer some questions to my satisfaction, and that will be that.”
“Whatever I can,” Lutetia whispered. Her tiny hands were clasped about her purse as if it were holding her instead of the other way around.
“And if you want anything, just say so and I’ll have a matron called.”
“Thank you.”
He began.
Her answers tended to be erratic, as if she were not putting her whole mind into the interrogation. Yes, she remembered the night of September 14th. She had had dinner delayed in the hope that her husband might have decided to return home from Washington instead of staying overnight. (Did the merest flush come into her cheeks?) After dinner she had gone to the music room and tried to read. She had dismissed the servants for the night — they all slept out.
“But I found I couldn’t concentrate on Mrs. Oliphant’s novel,” Lutetia said. “So I thought I would catch up on my needlework...” She wandered off into reminiscence. “It reminds me of when I was a girl. I tended to be willful, especially about things like needlework, and my grandmother was quite severe with me about it. ‘When I was a girl,’ she would say, ‘I had to learn spinning and weaving as well.’ I remember when she lay dying. It all came back to her. I suppose she confused me with her sister, after whom I am named, because she said to me, ‘Lutetia, have you carded the flax yet?’ Of course I said, “Yes, dear.’ And it seemed to me she looked pleased. She said to me then, ‘Whatsoever thy hands find to do, do it with all thy might.’”
Dane thought: Damn your girlhood reflections, Mother! You’ll hang yourself.
Inspector Queen had listened patiently. Whether he found Lutetia’s reminiscence of special interest Dane could not tell. The old man waited for a moment, then he cleared his throat. “How long did you spend on your needlework that evening, Mrs. McKell? Can you recall?”
She looked surprised. “I didn’t spend any time at all on my needlework. I said I only thought about doing so.”
“You did, didn’t you? Excuse me, Mrs. McKell, I guess I wasn’t paying close enough attention. Then you didn’t do any sewing that night. What did you do? — after putting the book down, I mean?”
Astonishingly, Lutetia uttered the ghost of a giggle. Inspector Queen looked dumfounded. It was as if Queen Victoria had belched.
“I’m ashamed to say, Inspector. Well, I suppose it can’t be helped. Oh, dear, now you’ll think me a complete scatterbrain. Dane, you remember I told you when you came in just past midnight—”
The Inspector glanced at Dane.
“Mother was watching television,” Dane said curtly. He was embarrassed. Why did she have to be such a prig? The old policeman would think it was an act. How could he believe she was being herself? How could anyone who didn’t know her?
“Well, we won’t make a federal case out of that,” Inspector Queen said dryly. “It’s a vice shared by a lot of people, they tell me. Mrs. McKell, how long did you watch TV?”
“For almost three hours,” Lutetia confessed.
“Do you remember what you saw?”
“Oh... dear. I’m afraid I can’t. They’re all sort of the same, aren’t they? I do recall some old motion picture...”
The Inspector pressed her softly. He got little out of her. She had not left the apartment, she had had no visitors.