Lady Irene raised a black-bordered handkerchief to her lips, then said quietly:
“I don’t know what you mean, Mary. I never wear big hats.”
“No, my lady,” here interposed the lady’s maid; “but Mary means the one you ordered at Sanchia’s and only wore the once—the day you went to that concert.”
“Which day was that?” asked Lady Molly, blandly.
“Oh! I couldn’t forget that day,” ejaculated the maid; “her ladyship came home from the concert—I had undressed her, and she told me that she would never wear her big hat again—it was too heavy. That same day Mr. Culledon was murdered.”
“That hat would answer our purpose very well,” said Lady Molly, quite calmly. “Perhaps Mary will go and fetch it, and you had better go and help her put it on.”
The two girls went out of the room without another word, and there were we three women left facing one another, with that awful secret, only half-revealed, hovering in the air like an intangible spectre.
“What are you going to do, Lady Irene?” asked Lady Molly, after a moment’s pause, during which I literally could hear my own heart beating, whilst I watched the rigid figure of the widow in deep black crape, her face set and white, her eyes fixed steadily on Lady Molly.
“You can’t prove it!” she said defiantly.
“I think we can,” rejoined Lady Molly, simply; “at any rate, I mean to try. I have two of the waitresses from Mathis’ outside in a cab, and I have already spoken to the attendant who served you at Sanchia’s, an obscure milliner in a back street near Portland Road. We know that you were at great pains there to order a hat of certain dimensions and to your own minute description; it was a copy of one you had once seen Miss Löwenthal wear when you met her at your late husband’s office. We can prove that meeting, too. Then we have your maid’s testimony that you wore that same hat once, and once only, the day, presumably, that you went out to a concert—a statement which you will find it difficult to substantiate—and also the day on which your husband was murdered.”