“I think I’m giving you almost her exact words. At any rate, I’m giving you the exact idea she conveyed. That was chiselled in my mind.”
Bertha Cool calmly selected another cigarette, lit it, took a deep drag and blew smoke out into the room.
“What did she say happened to this other woman?”
“It was terrible, that awful laughter—”
“Never mind the laughter, what did she say happened to her?” Bertha asked.
“She said to ask this other woman what happened to people who thought they could pull the wool over her eyes — and then I read about the body of the servant being found in her cellar.”
Bertha said casually, “you’ve got yourself in a hell of a mess, haven’t you?”
“How well I know it,” Dolly Cornish admitted ruefully.
“If you tell your story, it looks as if you’d been breaking up the Belder home, and either drove Mrs. Belder to suicide, or—” Bertha broke off to regard Mrs. Cornish with shrewd little eyes in which there was an unspoken accusation.
“Or what?” Dolly Cornish asked.