“Uh-huh.”
She laughed.
I said, “That’s the way it figures. It looked like an inside job to me. It had to be. Esther Clarde knew about the switch on letters — everything that was going on here. When the officers took me up to her apartment, she was going to let them in. Then she saw me, and decided to talk in the corridor. I figured someone was in there I knew. It just about had to be Bob. I pegged Bob for the whole business, but it didn’t exactly fit. I overlooked the most logical bet.”
“What do you mean? You surely don’t mean that Carter got in my room and—”
“No,” I said. “Your stepmother. Don’t you get the picture? You were really the one who made a home for your father. When you went away and he was left to shift for himself, he got desperately lonely. He wouldn’t say anything to you because he thought you had your own life to live, that you’d sooner or later get married and leave him anyway. So he decided to carry on and try to make another home for himself. When you came back, he realised how he’d made a fool of himself. Mrs. Ashbury saw the picture in its true light. Little things you did gave her the clue.”
“You mean she got the letters?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“To involve you in that wife murder and get you thoroughly discredited. She thought it would give her the whip hand.”
“And what did she do with them?”