“Not if, as you say, they’re of the daring and capable sort.”
“Oh, they are! If Maida Wheeler did this thing, she could stage the fire easily enough. Or Mrs. Wheeler could, either. They’re hummers when it comes to efficiency and actually doing things!”
“You surprise me. Mrs. Wheeler seems such a gentle, delicate personality.”
“Yep; till she’s roused. Then she’s full of tiger! Oh, I know Sara Wheeler. You ask my wife what Mrs. Wheeler can do!”
“Tell me a little more of this conditional pardon matter. Is it possible that for fifteen years Mr. Wheeler has never stepped over to the forbidden side of his own house?”
“Perfectly true. But it isn’t his house, it’s Mrs. Wheeler’s. Her folks are connected with the Applebys and it was the work of old Appleby that the property came to Sara with that tag attached, that she must live in Massachusetts. Also, Appleby pardoned Wheeler on condition that he never stepped foot into Massachusetts. And there they were. It was Sara Wheeler’s ingenuity and determination that planned the house on the state line, and she has seen to it that Dan Wheeler never broke parole. It’s second nature to him now, of course.”
“But I’m told that he did step over the night of the murder. That he went into the sitting-room of his wife—or maybe into the forbidden end of that long living-room—to see the fire. It would be a most natural thing for him to do.”
“Not natural, no, sir.” Burdon rubbed his brow thoughtfully. “Yet he might ’a’ done it. But one misstep like that ought to be overlooked, I think.”
“And would be by his friends—but suppose there’s an enemy at work. Suppose, just as a theory, that somebody is ready to take advantage of the peculiar situation, that seems to prove Dan Wheeler was either outside his prescribed territory—or he was the murderer. To my way of thinking, at present, that man’s alibi is his absence from the scene of the crime. And, if he was absent, he must have been over the line. I know this from talks I’ve had with the servants and the family and guests, and I’m pretty confident that Wheeler was either in the den or in the forbidden north part of the house at the moment of the murder.”
“Why don’t you know which it was?” asked Burdon, bluntly.