"Fine thing," Oliver said. He was trying to look very black. He seized on the state of Althea's health. "She had that cold. She oughtn't to be out."
Grandy said, "Poor Francis," gently, watching Mathilda.
She was wildly puzzled. Why was Grandy watching her so? What did it mean if Francis and Althea went out to the garden? Why "poor Francis"? Why Althea, anyway? She had a nightmarish feeling that the others knew what she did not know. She rejected it fiercely. Not so. It was she who knew and they who had been deceived. And the quicker she made it plain the better.
Grandy said, "Shall we—"
She thought he meant that they would talk now. “Yes, now," she said. But the doorbell rang.
"There now, answer the doorbell, Oliver. Please, dear boy. Who can it be?"
They went into the long room. Grandy took his chair by the fire. Tyl took her low chair at his feet. Jane, who had followed them, went a little aside, picked up a bit of knitting and put herself meekly into the corner of a sofa. It was just as if Grandy had composed the picture, directed the scene. Even the firelight flickered with just the proper effect. Luther Grandison at home. Curtain going up.
Oliver came in from the hall. "Its Tom Gahagen."
Gahagen was the chief of the detective bureau, a small, lean, nervous man with a tight dutiful mouth, but a friendly face. He listened with an air of waiting, while Grandy enlarged charmingly upon Mathilda's miraculous return from the sea. Then he said,
clearing his throat naively, "As long as I'm here, Luther, there are a few questions. I thought it would be all right just to drop in and talk it over. Didn't want to make it formal, y'understand?"
Grandy nodded. "About poor Rosaleen?" Then he appeared struck to the heart by his own forgetfulness. He took Mathilda's hand. "My dear child, forgive me. You don't know—"
"Francis told me," Mathilda said.
"That's your husband?"
Mathilda's eyes widened. She heard Grandy say smoothly, "Yes, yes, her husband. . . . What did Francis tell you, duck?"
"Just that she—" Mathilda couldn't continue. She was shocked because Grandy had said Francis was her husband. She'd had it in her head all along that Grandy, somehow, knew better.
Gahagen said, "Very sad, the whole thing. Sorry to bring it back to mind, but there's a point we've just come across. Funny thing, too."
Jane's foot in the small black childish shoe rested on the floor, but only the heel touched and the ankle was tight. No one could see Jane's foot. Her face was calm and her eyes cast down, watching her work.
"You remember," Gahagen went on, turning to Grandy, "that day, along about early afternoon, some of the newsmen got in here?"
"Yes, yes."
"Took your picture?"
"Did they not?" sighed Grandy. "Yes."
Gahagen's eyes went to the mantel above their heads. "One of those shots was right here in front of this fireplace. That clock's electric, ain't it?"
"Yes, of course." Grandy's voice was sirup sliding out of a pitcher.
Gahagen said, "I'd like to have a look at your fuse box, Luther. Want to see what arrangement you've got in this house."
“Why, Tom?"
The detective slipped away from Grandy's bright and friendly gaze. He chose to explain all this to Mathilda. "You see," he told her, and she couldn't wrench her eyes from his plain, kind face, "the girl got up on Mr. Grandison's desk in there. You know his ceiling hook—the one he had put in for hanging special lights? She—er—used that, y'see, and stepped off the desk, like." Tyl felt sick. "Well, it isn't pleasant to think about, but she couldn't help it—kicking, y'know. Her leg got tangled in the lamp on his desk, pulled it
over, wires came out of the bulb socket."
"So they did," said Grandy. He sounded politely puzzled.
"What we figure now," the detective said, "is that she must've blown a fuse. Blown a fuse when she kicked the lamp, see?"
"Is that possible?"
"Certainly. It's possible all right. Couple of bare wires, they're going to short-circuit. I'll tell you why we wondered. That electric clock up there was showing behind your shoulder in this picture, and it was all cuckoo. Gave the time wrong. It says twenty minutes after ten. And the picture was taken after two o'clock in the afternoon. We know that."
"The clock was wrong?"
"Lemme look at it, d'you mind?" The detective got up to examine the black, square modern-looking clock. "Yeah, see? This one is the old kind. It don't start itself."
Mathilda was near enough to Grandy to feel him suppress an impulse to speak. Oliver spoke up impatiently. "No, of course it doesn't. You have to start it after the currents been off. The new ones start themselves."
"Anybody cut the current off that morning?" asked Gahagen. "Was the master switch thrown at all, d you know?"
Oliver said, "Not that I know of."
"Nor I," said Grandy. He edged forward in his chair. "I'm not sure that I follow you, Tom. What are you getting at?"
"Gives us the exact time," the detective said. "That is, if it does. Y'see, there was no power failure that day anywhere in town. We've already checked on that. So it must have been something right here in the house made the clock stop, see? Now I'd like to look at
your circuits, eh? If this clock actually is hooked in on the same circuit as the study lamp, why—"
Again Grandy suppressed something. Tyl had a telepathic flash. Who'd told Gahagen about the clock and the circuits? The kind of clock it was, what circuit it was on? Because he wasn't wondering. He was checking.
"I don't understand," purred Grandy, "about the clock. But something's wrong with your thought, you see, Tom, because the lights worked."
"Yeah, we know." He nodded. "Lights were O.K. when we got here. So there's this question: Did anybody put in a new fuse?" Oliver was looking blank.
"If so, who?" said Grandy softly. "Fuses don't replace themselves. I really—"
"They don't," said the detective. "If a fuse'd been blown, somebody knew it. Somebody replaced it. None of my men did." He waited, but no one spoke. "Well I don't suppose it's important. Still, I oughta— Where's your fuse box? Cellar?"
"Oliver, show him, do. . . . Jane, dear—"
Mathilda held on to Grandy's knee. The lights were going off and on all over the house. It was queer and frightening. Jane had gone to stand at the top of the cellar steps and call out which lights went off and when, while the two men below were playing with the fuses. Mathilda held on to Grandy's knee, which was steady. She had begun to cry a little.
Grandy was talking to her. He stroked her hair. “ . . nor will we ever know. Poor child. Poor, dark, tortured Rosaleen. She was so very tense. Tyl, you remember? Remember how her heels clicked, how quick and taut she was? Remember how she held her shoulders? Tight? Brittle, you see, Tyl. Strung too tight. Poor little one. No elasticity, no give, no play. And since she couldn't stretch or change, she broke."
"But why?" sobbed Tyl. "Oh, Grandy, what was wrong?"
"Not known," he said, like a bell tolling over Rosaleen's grave. "Not known. She didn't let us into her life, Tyl. You remember? She was with us and of us, but she was, herself, alone."
That's true, Tyl thought
"I think it was in the air," he continued. "The house was waiting, days before. The storm in her was disturbing all of us, but we didn't know. Or we put it down to sorrow and suspense over you, my dear. But now I remember that morning. She was writing a letter