“Read it, and look at the date. It was mislaid for fourteen months. I only read it myself for the first time a day or so ago.”
She took the letter. Her face stiffened and the pupils of her eyes contracted at the sight of the handwriting. After she had read it she sat still for several minutes, staring at it. I didn’t hurry her. Fear, real and undisguised, was plain to see on her face.
“And this—this started you making inquiries?” she asked at last.
“Your sister sent me five hundred dollars. I felt bound to earn it. I came out to Crestways to see you and talk it over. If you had been there and had explained the letter I should have returned the money and dropped the inquiry. But you weren’t there. Then all kinds of things started to happen, so I continued the investigation.”
“I see.”
I waited for her to say something else, hut she didn’t. She sat still, staring at the letter; her face white and her eyes hard.
“Were you being blackmailed?” I asked.
“No. I don’t know why she wrote to you. I suppose she was trying to make trouble. She was always trying to make trouble for me. She hated me.”
“Why did she hate you?”
She stared down at the garden for a long time without saying anything. I drank some of the whisky and smoked. If she was going to tell me she would in her own time. She wasn’t the type to be rushed.