Madame Velasquez spread billows of blue satin and marabou into an armchair.
“I don’t know how it happened,” she said.
“Did you find her body in the apartment?”
“There ain’t no body.” Madame Velasquez then added, as her brittle little eyes glittered with a strange sort of conviction, “He made away with it.”
“Who did, Madame Velasquez?”
“Herbert Endicott,” she said.
For a startled moment Lieutenant Valcour stared sharply down curious vistas: had Endicott killed Marge Myles, perhaps having called for her just after she had written that note to her mother? He brought himself up shortly. Utter nonsense! Endicott was in this very room at the time when Marge Myles must have been writing that note and was himself in the process of being killed.
“That isn’t possible, Madame Velasquez,” he said quietly. “Endicott was himself attacked right here at about the time your stepdaughter must have been writing that note to you. That was at seven last evening—at the very moment he was to call for her at her apartment—and it must have been a little after seven when she wrote, as she states in the note that he hadn’t come.”
“No matter”—her beringed fingers fluttered extravagantly—“I feel certain he did it, and I want him punished and caught.”
“But Mr. Endicott is dead, Madame Velasquez.”
“That’s what you say,” she said.