“No,” agreed Rob, “and we have no suspect. Now that Carleton and Miss Dupuy are both out of it, I don’t see who could have done it.”
“I never felt fully satisfied about Miss Morton and her burned paper,” said Kitty thoughtfully.
They were walking along a village road while carrying on this conversation, so there was no danger of Miss Morton’s overhearing them.
“I’ve never felt satisfied about that woman, any way,” said Rob. “The oftener I see her the less I like her. She’s too smug and complacent. And yet when she was questioned, she went all to pieces.”
“Well, as she flatly contradicted what Marie had said, of course they couldn’t keep on questioning her. You can’t take a servant’s word against a lady’s.”
“You ought to, in a serious case like this. I say, Kitty, let’s go there now and have a heart-to-heart talk with her.”
Kitty laughed at the idea of a heart-to-heart talk between those two people, but said she was willing to go.
“It mayn’t amount to anything,” went on Rob, “and yet, it may. I’ve asked Mr. Fairbanks to chase up that burned paper matter, but he said there was nothing in it. He didn’t hear Marie’s story, you see,—he only heard it retold, and he doesn’t know how sincere that girl seemed to be when she told about it.”
“Yes, and I saw Miss Morton in Maddy’s room, too. I think she ought to tell what she was up to.”
So to the Van Norman house went the two inquisitors, and had Miss Morton known of their fell designs she might not have greeted them as cordially as she did.