“It isn’t the sort of thing one would plunge into directly.”
“You would have told me in time, then?”
“Certainly.”
“And why,” he asked quietly, “did you try to direct my suspicions against Marge Myles when, in view of your special knowledge, that maid’s husband was the logical suspect? That’s a little inconsistent, isn’t it?”
She looked at him evenly.
“Do you always do precisely the proper thing at the proper moment?”
“Rarely ever, Mrs. Endicott.”
“Well, neither do I. I don’t think anybody does.”
She adopted again that patient, explanatory precision of the teacher. “A person’s actions or statements during any moment of great strain are dominated by that moment itself, rather than being any sane reflection of logical and contributory causes. At such times one clings to straws.”
“Marge Myles was a straw?”
Mrs. Endicott shrugged. “Herbert had gone, as I supposed, to see her. I believed that whatever happened to him would occur between this house and her apartment, or at some moment during the evening while they were together. I’m not claiming that there was any sense to my beliefs. I wasn’t feeling exactly sensible just then.”
“And you would have been quite willing to have Marge Myles blamed for anything that happened rather than either the sailor or Mr. Hollander?”
“Oh, quite.”