“What was the word, O’Brian?”
“Indeed and it sounded like crinoline, sir—the stuff the missus do be talking about in old dresses.”
“Was that all he said?”
“It was enough, sir. ‘Crinoline,’ said he, and looked very wise at that. Then he added, ‘For the present, boys, no more,’ and off they scampered like the devil in person was after them.”
“All right, O’Brian. Just stick where you are.”
Lieutenant Valcour wandered around the entrance hall but encountered, beyond his own and the medical examiner’s, no hat. He knew that Dr. Worth’s was still upstairs where the doctor had left it in Endicott’s bedroom. He found the cupboard Mrs. Endicott had referred to. There was no hat. The subject was becoming a fixed idea. It was growing increasingly believable that the attacker had taken the hat and worn it out of the house. But why should the attacker leave the house? And what was the matter with the attacker’s own hat? Time, if not Endicott himself, would have to tell.
From a reception room opening off the entrance hall he caught the murmur of Dr. Worth’s and the medical examiner’s voices in consultation. He passed the door indifferently and went upstairs.
… an old dame in black, seven foot tall if she was an inch. Her bonnet was on her head.
… and her bonnet, Lieutenant Valcour repeated softly to himself, was on her head.
He continued on up a second flight of stairs to the third floor. A door toward the end of the hall was open, and light flooded out through the doorway. He walked to it and looked in.