Fessenden drew back in horror.
“Don’t!” he cried. “You can’t mean that Schuyler put Miss Van Norman out of the way to clear the path for Miss Burt!”
“I don’t mean anything,” said Kitty, rather contradictorily. “But, as I said, Maddy was not killed by any one inside the house—I’m sure of that—and no one from outside could get in, except Schuyler—and he had a motive. Don’t you always, in detective work, look for the motive?”
“Yes, but this is too horrible!”
“All murders are ‘too horrible.’ But I tell you it must have been Schuyler—it couldn’t have been Miss Burt!”
“Don’t be absurd! That little girl couldn’t kill a fly, I’m sure. I wish you could see her, Miss French. Then you’d understand how her very contrast to Miss Van Norman’s splendid beauty would fascinate Schuyler. And I know he was fascinated. I saw it in his repressed manner last evening, though I didn’t realize it then as I do now.”
“I have a theory,” said Kitty slowly. “You know Mr. Carleton went away yesterday afternoon rather angry at Maddy. She had carried her flirtation with Tom a little too far, and Mr. Carleton resented it. I don’t blame him,—the very day before the wedding,—but it was partly his fault, too. Well, suppose he went home, rather upset over the quarrel, and then seeing Miss Burt, and her probably mild, angelic ways (I’m sure she has them!)—suppose he wished he could be off with Maddy, and marry Miss Burt instead.”
“But he wouldn’t kill his fiancée, if he did think that!”
“Wait a minute. Then suppose, after the evening in the rose-garden with the gentle, clinging little girl, he concluded he never could be happy with Maddy, and suppose he came at eleven o’clock, or whatever time it was, to tell her so, and to ask her to set him free.”
“On the eve of the wedding day? With the house already in gala dress for the ceremony?”