She answered with the mechanical patience of an elder explaining some academic problem to a child.
“It was necessary to take her into account. As I have already told you, she possessed a certain standing—enough of a one to differentiate her from the other women whom my husband picked up promiscuously—and the time might have come when I felt it advisable to get rid of her. Not murder—you’re too intelligent to misunderstand me—there are several ways one woman can get rid of another woman that are just as effective.”
“Which one did you employ, Mrs. Endicott?”
“It wasn’t especially nice, but I wasn’t dealing with a nice woman. I employed forgery.”
This caught Lieutenant Valcour a little unprepared.
“Forgery?”
“Yes. I added a postscript to a letter Harry Myles had sent me before he married Marge. Harry never dated his letters. This one was harmless enough, but there was a reference in it to the camp he owned by that lake up in Maine. The postscript that I added changed the whole character of the letter. It made it apparent that Harry very definitely feared Marge was planning to murder him. I gave that letter to Herbert about a month ago, when it seemed that his interest in Marge was becoming dangerously serious.”
“Didn’t he ask you why you hadn’t produced it before?”
“Yes. I explained that I had just come across it in an old letter file that hadn’t been gone through for years. I asked him whether it was too late to do anything about it—show the letter to some proper authority, for instance. Of course I knew what he would say.”
“That it was too late?”