At last she spoke. “I may as well own up,” she said, and laughed nervously. “I was on the verandah, as the vigilant butler noticed. I did step inside the hall, as I had so often heard of the rare tapestries and paintings, and, in my ennui, I thought it no harm to take a peep. The great door was ajar, and I was a little chilled by my walk across the lawns. I said to myself, if I meet any one I will merely beg a few moments’ grace and then run away. Yes, I did take a step or two up the stair, to look at a picture on the landing. It was all innocent enough, perhaps not in the best of taste, but I was lonely, and the light and warmth lured me. In a moment I had slipped out and run away home, laughing over my escapade like a foolish child.”
Her light laugh rippled out as she concluded her story. She looked ingenuous and truthful, but the Coroner distrusted feminine fairy-tales, and this was a little too fanciful to be true.
Moreover, Mrs. Frothingham was looking at him sharply from the corner of her eye. Clearly, she was watching him to see how he took it.
He didn’t take it very well. The acknowledged presence of an outsider in the house, for a not very plausible reason, was illuminating in his estimation. She had been on the stairway. Had she been to Miss Carrington’s room? True, she said she went only to the landing,—but pshaw, women had no regard for the truth! Had she and Count Charlier planned between them to—bah, why did this woman want to kill her neighbor? Even if she were jealous of the Count’s attention, would she go so far as crime? No, of course not! He must question her further. And yet, what good would that do, if she would not tell the truth?
Well, she was in the house at half-past eleven, that much was certain, for Stephen Illsley’s story and her own and also the butler’s testimony all coincided as to that.
And then, Detective Hardy, who had just returned from a short errand, made a startling statement. He declared that the glove which had been found clasped tightly in the dead fingers of the late Miss Carrington did belong to Count Henri Charlier.
Mr. Hardy had been searching the Count’s wardrobe, and though he did not find the mate to that particular glove, he found many others, some worn and some entirely unused, but all of the same size and made by the same firm as the one now in the Coroner’s possession!
Thus cornered Count Charlier reluctantly admitted that it was his glove.
“I denied it,” he thus excused himself, “because I have no idea how it came into Miss Carrington’s possession, and I did not wish to implicate her in an affair with my unworthy self.”
“H’m,” thought Gray Haviland, fixing his attention on the Count and on the flustered Mrs. Frothingham; “a precious pair of adventurers! I expect Scofield is right, we won’t need an expert detective.”