3:51 a.m. —A Woman’s Slipper
Lieutenant Valcour felt a distinct shock, and his eyes became predatorily alert. If this astonishing thing was true and Mrs. Endicott had not taken the narcotic prepared for her by Dr. Worth, then the bypaths one might dart along were numerous and alarming indeed.
“How do you know, Miss Roberts?” he said.
“Because when the nurse went downstairs to make that coffee I went over to the bed. I wanted to take a close look at Mrs. Endicott. Have you ever felt that desire to look closely at something that you hate very much? It’s the curiosity of hate, I suppose. I put my hand on the spread, at the edge, so that I could lean down. The spread was damp; something had been poured on it. There wasn’t anything that could have been poured on it except the narcotic. She’d recovered consciousness, you see, when the nurse and Dr. Worth brought her in from here and put her to bed.”
“But wouldn’t he or the nurse have seen her pour it out?”
“None of us saw it, Lieutenant, because she said, just after the doctor had handed her the glass, ‘There’s blood on that dresser.’ We all looked at the dresser, of course. Naturally there wasn’t any blood on it. The doctor thought she was delirious. She was just finishing drinking when we turned around.”
“Didn’t you accuse her—when you felt the damp spot on the spread?”
“What was the use? She never would have admitted it. I believe,” Roberts said fiercely, “that I could have stuck pins in her and that she’d have