“Only a clever and watchful person, determined to shield the murderer.”
“Set up a hypothetical case,” suggested Maud. “Say, Mrs. Dallas was the murderer——”
“How absurd,” cried Lora, “why should she kill the man she expected to marry?”
“That we don’t know,” Maud went on in her calm way. “But there may have been reasons. Suppose Mr. Tracy had learned some secret in Mrs. Dallas’s past——”
“Go on,” Kee said, briefly, as Maud looked at him questioningly.
“I know it sounds melodramatic, but the whole affair is melodramatic, and those clues don’t seem to lead anywhere. Well, suppose Mrs. Dallas did it—killed him, I mean—and suppose somebody saw her who cared for her, Mr. Ames or Mr. Everett, or—or anybody. Mightn’t he trump up all that funny business to make it seem as if she could not have done it?”
“I don’t think you’ve struck it quite right, Maud,” Keeley said, “but I will say there’s a germ of thought in your theory. Granting two people concerned, there’s no reason to think them accomplices, it’s far more likely one is covering up the deeds of the other.”
“All of which is fantastic and not founded on fact,” Lora put in. “It’s only imagination, and one can imagine anything.”
“You have no use for imagination?” I asked her, smiling.
“Yes, when it is admittedly imagination, as in a fairy story or a romance. But imagination must not be used as a basis for argument.”