“No, Roberts. Lieutenant Valcour rang. Lieutenant Valcour is of the police.”
Any sudden announcing of the police is always shocking. It is a prelude to so many unpleasant possibilities even in the lives of the most blameless. They are in a class with telegrams. Lieutenant Valcour noted that Roberts accepted his identity with nothing further than an almost imperceptible catching of breath. Mrs. Endicott’s attitude puzzled him. It wasn’t resentment, certainly, or any stretching at rudeness; such emotions seemed so utterly inconsequential at this moment when she must have been wrenched by a very severe shock. It reminded him of the aimless play of lightning clowning before the purposeful fury of a storm.
“ Mrs. Endicott will explain things to you,” he said. “Stay with her, please.”
There lingered, as he went into the bathroom, a picture of the two women, separated by the distance of the room, standing quite still and staring at each other: Mrs. Endicott, young, exquisitely lovely looking—the other, older, quite implacable. The connection was absurd, but the effect remained of two antagonists in a strange encounter who are standing in their separate corners of a ring. He closed the bathroom door and slipped the catch. He turned on all the lights.
There was a single window. He parted muslin curtains and looked at a glazed lemon-coloured shade, especially along its hemmed bottom. There were some smudges at its centre that interested him. He believed that they had been made by a dirty thumb. He raised the shade and the lower sash of the window.
The night was clear and cold and windless. A shallow stone balcony ran the width of the rear of the house. It was for ornamentation rather than use, as to get onto it one had to straddle the window sill. Lieutenant Valcour did so, and stood looking down upon the dimly defined outlines