“You are fond of the family, then?”
“I am that! I’ve worked here for eight years, and never a cross word from the missus or the master. As for Miss Maida—she’s my darlint.”
“They’re fortunate in having you here,” said Stone, kindly. “That’s all, now, cook, unless you can remember anything more of that person you saw.”
“Nothin’ more, sor. If I do, I’ll tell you.”
Thinking hard, Stone left her.
It was the most unusual case he had ever attempted. If he looked no further for the murderer than the Wheeler family, he still had enough to do in deciding which one of the three was guilty. But he yearned for another suspect. Not a foolish phantom that went around piping, or a perhaps imaginary prowler stalking on the piazza, but a real suspect with a sound, plausible motive.
Though, to be sure, the Wheelers had motive enough. To be condemned to an absurd restriction and then teased about it, was enough to make life gall and wormwood to a sensitive man like Wheeler.
And who could say what words had passed between them at that final interview? Perhaps Appleby had goaded him to the breaking point; perhaps Wheeler had stood it, but his wife, descending the stairs and hearing the men talk, had grown desperate at last; or, and Stone knew he thought this most plausible of all, perhaps Maida, in her window-seat, had stood as long as she could the aspersions and tauntings directed at her adored father, and had, with a reckless disregard of consequences, silenced the enemy forever.
Of young Allen, Stone had no slightest suspicion. To be sure, his interests were one with the Wheeler family, and moreover, he had hoped for a release from restrictions that would let the Wheelers go into Massachusetts and thereby make possible his home there with Maida.
For Maida’s vow that she would never go into the state if her father could not go, too, was, Allen knew, inviolable.