“Partly. I had tea at the Ritz, early, about four-thirty—with,” she added defiantly, “a man.”
“Ah.”
“Exactly so. That will permit you to reverse another tradition and go cherchez l’homme .”
Lieutenant Valcour found instant good humour. “So you decided to fight fire with fire,” he said.
“If you care to call it that.”
“Just who is Marge Myles, and what?” Lieutenant Valcour said suddenly.
“There are several terms one might apply to her. They all mean the same thing. I believe that recently, however,” Mrs. Endicott said very distinctly, “she has lost her amateur standing.”
“Recently?”
“The past year or so.”
“ Mr. Endicott had known her as long as that?”
“Until the past month or two my husband had not known her at all. He’d heard of her, of course, and so had I.”
“Then she is a woman who once had position?”
“She was the wife of one of Herbert’s friends, a man who died two years ago and left her penniless. They say, incidentally, that she killed him.”
“Killed him?”
“It was just gossip, of course. They had a camp near some obscure lake up in Maine. The canoe they were in one evening upset. Harry Myles