"Was it something she said, Luther?"
"No, nothing she said. Nothing she did. Nothing I can describe. It was . . . the lurking death wish that lies so secretly in the heart. . . . Oh, my house," groaned Grandy, "my poor tragic house." Tyl felt the world would come apart at the seams.
"Sorry, Luther," said Tom Gahagen. "You know I'm sorry. Got to ask a few questions, get it straightened out." He shifted uneasily.
Grandy said, "Don't mind me, Tom." Then, in tones of pure heartbreak, "I am wondering, of course, what I ought to have done that I left undone."
"Aren't we all?" said Francis in a queer, harsh, angry voice. It was as if he'd been rude. Grandy's gentleness reproached him.
Oliver said monotonously, "We had a quarrel, a dumb, jealous quarrel. She'd been out in the guest house with Howard, and I didn't like it So we said a lot of bitter, nasty stuff and I slammed out of here. She wouldn't tell me what they'd talked about, and I wanted to know. I thought it was my business. She said it wasn't."
The careful voice broke. "It couldn't have been over me that she did it. Because I didn't matter that much to Althea, and that's the truth."
It didn't sound like Oliver. He'd been shocked into honest humility. Tyl could have wept for him.
Gahagen looked at Francis. "What were you and Mrs. Keane talking about so long?" he asked with cold precision.
Francis said, "She was in no suicidal mood."
"What d'you mean?"
"She was in no suicidal mood." He repeated his statement quietly. "I spent a good while last evening talking to her, and I would have known."
"What were you talking about?"
Francis shrugged. "As a matter of fact, I was telling her my troubles, and she was very kind," he said smoothly. "And she was not thinking about suicide."
Gahagen's glance passed from one young man to the other. His thought was transparent on his tight face. A triangle. Jealousy. Trouble. No way to get to the bottom of it.
Grandy said softly, "We can't be sure that note was not just a note she'd written some other time. Perhaps this was an accident.... Is that possible, Tom?"
Gahagen examined this soft suggestion and thought he understood it. Some tangle of emotions here that could not be publicly explained.
Mathilda spoke up at last. "Althea did use that phrase, 'Forgive me,' such a lot"
"She did. She did," murmured Grandy. "You're right, Tyl. So she did."
"You don't think it was a suicide note at all?" Gahagen sounded tentative, as if he might, in the end, take their word for it.
Grandy said, "Not necessarily. Quite possibly, it wasn't.”
Francis said coldly—almost as if he knew, Tyl thought—"She didn't commit suicide, Mr. Gahagen."
"Then you think it was an accident?"
Francis didn't answer.
But Oliver's new and bitter voice said without drama, "I'd rather think so."
There was one of those silences.
"She was," said Francis firmly, insistently, even loudly, "in no more suicidal mood than Mathilda is right now."
Heads turned. What an odd thing to say! Gahagen's brows made puzzled motions.
"I'd like you all to look at Mathilda," said Francis easily. That is, his voice was easy; his arm, hanging over the back of the chair he sat in, was dangling with an effect of being relaxed. But there were two hard little fines near his mouth that Jane would have recog-
nized.
"Why should we look at Mathilda?" purred Grandy. He had himself looked up at last. His black eyes were narrow behind his glasses. He looked wary and alert and as if he were listening hard, trying to hear more than Francis' quiet voice as it went on.
"Because I don't care for these suicidal rumors," said Francis. I don't like premonitions after the fact. I want all of you to look very carefully at Mathilda, and if you see anything . . . ominous, then let us arrange to take very good care of her." Francis opened his hand,
looked at the palm, turned it over, let it fall. "Since two pretty young girls have died in this house," he said, "I'd just as soon there wasn't any third one. So take a good look at Mathilda now. And if she's in a dangerous mood, let's have nurses in and watch her. Let's
take no more chances."
There was silence—rather a strained silence. Tyl shook her head. "I don't understand."
"You want to live, don't you? You're not depressed? Not brooding? Not low? You feel well? You're young and looking forward? You've got something to live for?" Francis barked questions at her harshly, angrily. "You don't want to die?"
"Of course I don't want to die! I don't know what you're talking about!" She was so angry she stood up without knowing she had done so. With her head thrown back, her chin up, eyes bright, her breath drawn with indignation, her lovely figure taut and poised, she was most vividly alive.
"Now, Mrs. Howard—" Gahagen began soothingly.
Mathilda flashed around to face him. She would have said she was not Mrs. Howard, but Grandy was around his desk and beside her suddenly, and his hands on her shoulders were quieting and warning her. "There, duckling, there. Francis worries. Naturally. Naturally. You mustn't be angry." He turned to Gahagen. "I think he's made a point," he said. "We could not possibly say there was any mood at all. I can't condemn—" Grandy's voice broke a little. "I dare not damn Althea with a piece of imagined nonsense which may have been my own mood after all. And if we can't say for sure, Tom, ought we not to say it was an accident?"
"That—er—note—" began the detective.
"Such a strange little note," said Grandy. "So vague. So meaningless. I fancy she's written such a note to me or Oliver many a time. And as long as we do not know her reasons or even whether she had any, need we mention any note? To—to people? Frankly, Tom"—Grandy compressed his lips—"I don't want to hear them speculating. I don't want to hear their guesses. I don't want to know they're wondering why Althea wanted to die. For myself, I would rather believe Althea left us accidentally. I do earnestly believe that she loved and trusted us enough to wish to stay."
Francis put both hands over his face.
Tyl thought, Francis is more upset than Oliver, even. She thought, Poor Althea, how could she make a mistake and die? She thought. Oh, my poor Grandy! Pity and grief wheeled around, tumbled each other in her consciousness and yet hardly roused her. They were pale images of coming emotions, only their mental shadows.
But Francis' hands were hiding a black and deadly anger, full grown.
Chapter Eighteen
All afternoon people came. Tyl was still encased in an aching paralysis that hadn't yet sharpened to pain. It didn't occur to her not to remain in the long room, not to stay there and bear it She was there, and people came—Grandy's friends—and she stayed and watched and listened numbly.
Grandy was in his big chair. No tears, no sighs, no break in the rich gentleness of his voice. He made kind little inquiries of his friends about their daily affairs. Ever so gently, he kept his grief private. The assumption was that it lay too deep for tears. Tyl saw more than one turn away from him with a convulsed face. It was so beautiful a performance, such a touching thing.
Grandy's friends. Personalities, all of them. They would go to him and receive his gentle greeting, his sweet questions. Then they would go to Oliver, who was in the room, although he seemed not to know where he was exactly, and only stammered “Oh, hello,"