A tall, thin woman sat on a chair before a grate in which some coals burned bleakly. She was unbelievably gaunt—her silhouette a pencil, rigidly supporting an austere face beneath a smooth inverted cup of steel gray hair. Black taffeta sheathed her, tightly pressing against flat narrow planes, and smoothly surfacing two pipelike arms that ended in the tapering, sensitive hands of an emotional ascetic.
Lieutenant Valcour rapped on the door jamb.
The woman did not start. Her head alone turned and faced him, and her eyes were a contradiction of nature—black planets glowing coldly in a sky of white.
“Pardon me, I am Lieutenant Valcour of the police. Are you, by any chance, the housekeeper?”
Her voice was of New England—low almost to huskiness, a trifle harsh, and completely stripped of all nuances.
“Yes, Lieutenant. I am Mrs. Siddons.”
“May I come in? Thank you—please don’t get up. I’ll only stay a minute or two, if you don’t mind.”
He took a chair and placed it before the fireplace beside her own. He sat down and did nothing beyond observing obliquely for a moment the curiously artificial placidity of Mrs. Siddons’s clasped hands.
“There is no use in questioning me, Lieutenant, because I have nothing to say.”
Her tone was the chill clear winds that sweep the rigorous mountains of Vermont.
Lieutenant Valcour warmed his hands before the lazy coals and smiled amiably. “And I,” he said, “have absolutely nothing to ask.”