Country homes -- Fiction; Middle-aged women -- Fiction; Murder -- Investigation -- Fiction; Mystery fiction
I wakened early, in spite of my fatigue, and lay there thinking. Who
was Alex? I no longer believed that he was a gardener. Who was the man
whose body we had resurrected? And where was Paul Armstrong? Probably
living safely in some extraditionless country on the fortune he had
stolen. Did Louise and her mother know of the shameful and wicked
deception? What had Thomas known, and Mrs. Watson? Who was Nina
Carrington?
This last question, it seemed to me, was answered. In some way the
woman had learned of the substitution, and had tried to use her
knowledge for blackmail. Nina Carrington’s own story died with her,
but, however it happened, it was clear that she had carried her
knowledge to Halsey the afternoon Gertrude and I were looking for clues
to the man I had shot on the east veranda. Halsey had been half crazed
by what he heard; it was evident that Louise was marrying Doctor Walker
to keep the shameful secret, for her mother’s sake. Halsey, always
reckless, had gone at once to Doctor Walker and denounced him. There
had been a scene, and he left on his way to the station to meet and
notify Mr. Jamieson of what he had learned. The doctor was active
mentally and physically. Accompanied perhaps by Riggs, who had shown
himself not overscrupulous until he quarreled with his employer, he had
gone across to the railroad embankment, and, by jumping in front of the
car, had caused Halsey to swerve. The rest of the story we knew.
That was my reconstructed theory of that afternoon and evening: it was
almost correct—not quite.
There was a telegram that morning from Gertrude.
“Halsey conscious and improving. Probably home in day or so.
GERTRUDE.”
With Halsey found and improving in health, and with at last something
to work on, I began that day, Thursday, with fresh courage. As Mr.
Jamieson had said, the lines were closing up. That I was to be caught
and almost finished in the closing was happily unknown to us all.
It was late when I got up. I lay in my bed, looking around the four
walls of the room, and trying to imagine behind what one of them a
secret chamber might lie. Certainly, in daylight, Sunnyside deserved
its name: never was a house more cheery and open, less sinister in
general appearance. There was not a corner apparently that was not open
and above-board, and yet, somewhere behind its handsomely papered walls
I believed firmly that there lay a hidden room, with all the
possibilities it would involve.
I made a mental note to have the house measured during the day, to
discover any discrepancy between the outer and inner walls, and I tried
to recall again the exact wording of the paper Jamieson had found.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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