“Of course I came here directly I heard of it,” she continued, ignoring us altogether, and talking only to him. “It is a terrible trouble to me, and he was the only relative I had left in the world. You cannot wonder, can you, that I want to find out all about it?”
“That is a very hard task,” he said. “It is a task best left, I think, in the hands of the proper authorities.”
“They do not know as much as I know,” she answered. “He had an enemy.”
“The man Maltabar, of whom you spoke?”
“Yes. It was for him I inquired at once. Yet I suppose I must conclude that he is not at any rate a resident around here. I thought that he might have changed his name, and I have described him to a great many people. Nobody seems to recognize him.”
“Don’t you think,” Adelaide Fortress said, quietly, “that you have done all that it is possible for any one to do? The police are doing their utmost to solve the mystery of your brother’s death. If I were you I should leave it to them.”
She shook her head.
“I am not satisfied to do nothing,” she said. “You cannot imagine what it feels like to lose some one very dear to you in such a terrible way. I think of it sometimes until I tremble with passion, and I think that if I could meet the man who did it face to face, I would stab him to the heart myself, with my own hands. I am weak, but I feel that I could do it. I cannot go away from here if I would. Something seems to tell me that the key to the whole mystery lies here—just at hand. No, I cannot go away. I must watch and wait. It may come to me at any moment.”
No one answered her. She was conscious of a certain antagonism to her, betrayed by our lack of response to that little outburst and our averted faces. She looked from one to the other of us, and finally at Bruce Deville.