Mrs. Gentrie said, “I’d rather you’d just take a peek inside. I’d prefer almost anything than to have Rebecca come down now with all of her questions and — you know, if she got the idea I knew Junior wasn’t in his room when that shot was fired she’d tell lieutenant Tragg. Oh, Mr. Mason, please tell me that Junior didn’t do it. That’s the thing that’s been torturing me. You know how it is with a young boy, when he becomes infatuated with an older woman with more worldly experience. If she’s inclined to play him along, she can make a terrible fool of him. And all through this thing, Junior has acted so queerly. He just drew himself up very straight and erect and white-faced when Lieutenant Tragg placed him under arrest. He didn’t say a word.”
Mason said, “I want to see if Steele keeps his door locked. That may have some bearing on the whole thing.”
He crossed the dining room to the hallway, turned the knob of the door gently. It swung open on well-oiled, noiseless hinges. He looked inside, swung the door wider open so that light from the dining room illuminated the bedroom.
“There’s no one here,” he said.
Mrs. Gentrie got to her feet. “Why, good heavens, it’s well after three o’clock. Of course, he does stay out rather late at times, but I never knew him to be as late as this.”
Mason said, “However, because he has his own private exit and entrance, he could come and go very easily without you hearing him, couldn’t he?”
She said, “Yes, I suppose so.”
Mason swung the door tentatively back and forth. “These hinges,” he said, “seem to have been freshly oiled.”
“Well, I declare to goodness,” Mrs. Gentrie observed, examining the hinges. “They certainly have!”
“ You didn’t oil them?”