However, Kennedy did not seem to attach much importance to what either Celeste or Chase had said. Evidently he had a pretty clear idea already of what had happened.
I recalled Celeste and the "Aussage test." Was Celeste to be trusted—even over a dictagraph?
Doyle seemed to read in Kennedy's face what I had already seen, and hastened on to new points in his arguments from the notes.
"That's all very well about Celeste," he continued, excitedly, "but here's the real news, after all. The most important thing was what happened an hour or so later, after Chase had gone. McCabe picked up the voice of a woman. It was Mrs. Lathrop herself calling on Mrs. Wilford. How about that?"
"What!" I exclaimed, involuntarily, I suppose, because of Kennedy's continued silence. "Vina called on Honora Wilford? Why, man, I should have thought the wires would have fused!"
"Well, that's what she did," asserted Doyle, "and you'll be more surprised when I tell you what happened."
Doyle was enjoying the suspense he himself had created. Still Kennedy said nothing, not so much, I think, because he would not give Doyle the satisfaction of observing his interest as because his mind was at work piecing into his own theories the new facts that were being brought out. For that has always been Kennedy's method—the gathering of facts, fitting them together, like a mosaic, with fragments missing, and then with endless patience fitting the new fragments as they are discovered into the whole picture of a crime until the case was completed and he was ready to act with relentless and unerring precision.
As for myself, I listened to what Doyle had to reveal with amazement. Here was a meeting, separated only by hours, if not merely by minutes, from another in which Vina's own husband had called on Shattuck.
"As nearly as I can make out from McCabe's notes," began Doyle, "Mrs. Lathrop must have been seeking this meeting and Mrs. Wilford avoiding it for some time. You see, the interview was so passionate that often the voices were indistinct and his notes are fragmentary in spots. However, there's enough to show what it was all about."
Doyle turned a page. "It started with Mrs. Lathrop accusing Mrs. Wilford of avoiding seeing her. When Mrs. Wilford pleaded the tragedy and the surveillance she is under, Mrs. Lathrop hinted that she was using these things to shield herself.