“You were not convinced, then, that she would accept your story as to when the letters were written?”
“I didn’t want her to know that they had ever been written. I’d never told her of the degree of—intimacy that had existed between Mimi and myself.”
“Exactly. Now Miss Cordier had told us that the notes from Mrs. Bellamy had been increasing in frequency at the time of the murder. Is that true?”
“Yes; I’d have about three in ten days.”
“Her demands were becoming more insistent?”
“Considerably.” Again that small grim smile, curiously unsuggestive of mirth.
“So that it had become essential for you to do something at once if you were to prevent these letters from reaching your wife?”
“It was necessary for me to produce the money at once, if that is what you mean.”
“Don’t trouble to analyze my meanings, if you please. Just answer my question.”
Patrick Ives’s eyes narrowed slightly. “Your question was ambiguous,” he commented without emphasis.