“Why—”
“It was like this, wasn’t it?”
I drew out the pearls and threw them on the table.
She bent forward slightly, still smiling, like a person watching with bewildered intensity a conjurer’s trick.
“Why—”
“Only your gold-mesh purse was with them—and your diamond bar-pin—and your rings.”
“Why—who, who on earth could have told you?”
I, too, continued to smile, consciously wondering if I should be as calm as this in the hour of death.
“Who do you think?”
“It wasn’t Elsie Coningsby?”