Two nights later Inspector Fuller was sitting in Hilda’s small neat living-room. The canary was covered in his cage, and the lamplight was warm on the blue curtains at the windows and on the gay chintz-covered chairs. Hilda was knitting, looking—he thought—as she always did, blandly innocent. Only her eyes showed the strain of the past two weeks.
“Why did you do it, Hilda?” he said. “Why did you telephone her that night?”
“I was sorry for her,” said Hilda. “I didn’t want her to go to the chair.”
“She wouldn’t have done that. After all, a prospective mother—”
“But you see she wasn’t,” said Hilda. “That was her excuse to get into the house.”
He stared at her.
“How on earth did you know?”
Hilda looked down at her knitting.
“There are signs,” she said evasively. “And it’s easy to say you have a pain. Nobody can say you haven’t.”
“But Garrison didn’t deny it.”
“What could he do? She was his wife, even if he hadn’t lived with her for years. I suppose he had suspected her all along, after the arsenic. I knew he was watching her. He’d followed her there at night, maybe when she went to see Ida. In the grounds, perhaps.”
“Then she knew about the agreement? That if Mrs. Fairbanks died the alimony ceased?”
She nodded.
“He must have told her. If they quarreled and she taunted him because he was hard up he might, you know.”
“How did she get the arsenic into the sugar?”
“Maggie says she came to the house the day before Marian and her mother returned from Florida. Jan was home by that time. She came to see her. But Mrs. Fairbanks’s tray was in the pantry, and she went there for a glass of water. She could have done it then.”
“But the poison didn’t kill Mrs. Fairbanks. So then it was the terror. That’s it, of course.”
“The terror. Yes. Ida had told her about the hole in the wall, and—I think she had something on Ida. Maybe an illegitimate child. There was a boy at the farm, and Eileen’s people lived nearby. She’d have known.”
“It was the boy who brought in the bats and the rest of the zoo, including the snake?”
“Well, I can’t think of any other way,” Hilda said meekly. “She may have told him she sold them, or something. Of course it was Ida who got Eileen the position as Jan’s governess.”
“And got a cup of poisoned tea as a reward!”
“She got the five hundred dollars, too. Don’t forget that. In new bills that Mrs. Fairbanks gave Eileen the night before she was murdered. Maybe Eileen bought her off with them. Maybe she just kept them. I don’t know. But she couldn’t stand for the stabbing anyhow, poor thing. Remember how she looked the next morning? And she must have had the phonograph in her room while we were there. She must have been scared out of her wits. It wasn’t until later that she took it to the loft, under the blankets, and hid it there.”
“Where Eileen retrieved it the next night. And nearly killed Jan. That’s right, isn’t it?”
“Yes.” Hilda looked thoughtful. “It’s odd, but I saw her. I didn’t know who it was, of course. I raised the window and she was across Huston Street. She pretended to be calling a dog.”
He got up, and lifting a corner of the cover, looked at the bird. It gazed back at him with small bright eyes, and he dropped the cover again.
“You’re a funny woman, Hilda,” he said. “In your heart you’re a purely domestic creature. And yet—well, let’s get back to Eileen. How and when did she use this radio-phonograph? Have you any idea?”
“I knew she had it,” she said modestly. “I found the man who sold it to her. She said it was to go to the country, so he showed her how to use it. As for the rest, I think she killed Mrs. Fairbanks and set the dial by her bed while the doctor was with Jan. Then he gave her the hypodermic and left her. That’s when the music started. He was in the hall.”
“Where did she have the thing?”
“Anywhere. Under the bed, probably. There’s a baseboard outlet there. She let it play until Carlton went in and turned off his mother’s radio. If he hadn’t she would have stopped it herself. She didn’t even have to get out of bed to do it. But of course things went wrong. I was there, in the hall. She hadn’t counted on my staying there every minute. And Ida was busy with Marian. I suppose that’s why she fainted when she did. She hadn’t got rid of the machine, and I’d found the body. She had thought she had until morning.”
“So it was there under the bed when you searched her room!”
“It was nothing of the sort,” she said indignantly.
“All right, I’ll bite. Where was it?”
“Hanging outside her window on a rope.”
He looked at her with admiration, not unmixed with something else.
“As I may have said before, Hilda, you’re a smart woman,” he said, smiling. “My safe looks like a rummage sale. I’ll present you with some of the stuff if you like. But I’d give a good bit to know why you interfered with the law and telephoned her.”
“Because she hadn’t killed Jan,” Hilda said. “She could have, but she didn’t.”
“What did you say over the phone? That all was discovered?”
She went a little pale, but her voice was steady.
“I really didn’t tell her anything,” she said. “I merely asked her if she still had her remote-control radio-phonograph. She didn’t say anything for a minute. Then she said no, she’d given it away.”
There were tears in her eyes. He got up and going over to her, put his hand on her shoulder. “Oh, subtle little Miss Pinkerton,” he said. “Lovable and clever and entirely terrible Miss Pinkerton! What am I to do about you? I’m afraid to take you, and I can’t even leave you alone.”
He looked down at her, her soft skin, her prematurely graying hair, her steady blue eyes.
“See here,” he said awkwardly, “Jan and young Brooke are going to be married. Susie and Carlton Fairbanks are going on a second honeymoon, looking for a farm. And unless I miss my guess Frank Garrison and Marian will remarry eventually. I’d hate like hell to join that crew of lovebirds, but—you won’t object if I come around now and then? Unprofessionally, of course, little Miss Pinkerton.”
She smiled up at him.
“I’d prefer even that to being left alone,” she said.
After he had gone she sat still for a long time. Then she determinedly took a long hot bath, using plenty of bath salts, and shampooed her short, slightly graying hair. Once more she looked rather a rosy thirty-eight-year-old cherub, and she was carefully rubbing lotion into her small but capable hands when the telephone rang. She looked desperately about her, at the books she wanted to read, at her soft bed, and through the door to her small cheerful sitting-room with the bird sleeping in its cage. Then she picked up the receiver.
“Miss Pinkerton speaking,” she said, and on hearing the inspector’s voice was instantly covered with confusion.