She was feeling safe in her furnished room in Philadelphia when she read of the murder in the papers. That scared her almost to death and she lay as close as a rabbit in a burrow, afraid to go out and cooking her food on a gas ring. It was the man she had stolen for who gave her away. When she refused to raise money on the jewels, he stole the lavalliere and pawned it.
Under the trees where she said she'd left them, the police found the coat and hat. Beside them was the bag stuffed full of lingerie, gloves and silk stockings, and with the false hair crowded down into the inside pocket.
Besides clearing the Doctor her confession threw light on two important points—one that Sylvia had left the house at a little after six, and the other that Reddy had been at the meeting place at the time he said.
[X]
After the excitement of the French woman's arrest there was a sort of lull. For a few days people thought we were going to move right on and lay our hands on the murderer. But outside of proving that the Doctor wasn't the guilty one the crime was no nearer a solution than it had been the day it happened. Though there was still a good deal of talk about it, it began to die down in the public interest and it was then that the papers got to calling it "The Hesketh Mystery" in place of "The Hesketh Murder."
The reporters left the Inn and went back to live in town, coming in every few days to snoop around for any new items that might have turned up. Babbitts came oftener than the others and stayed later, and he and I had several more walks. We were getting to be like partners in some kind of secret business, meeting after dark, and pacing along the roads round the village, with the stars shining overhead and the ground hard and crumbly under our feet.
If you'd met us you'd have set us down for a pair of lovers, walking side by side under the dark of the trees. But if you'd followed along and listened you'd have got cured of that romantic notion mighty quick. Our flirtation was all about evidence, and leads, and clues—not so much as a compliment or a baby stare from start to finish. I don't believe if you'd asked Babbitts he could have told you whether my eyes were brown or blue, and as for me—outside his being a nice kid he didn't figure out any more important than the weathervane on the Methodist Church.
It was "the case" that drew us together like a magnet drawing nails. We'd speculate about it, look at it all round as if it was something we had hold of in our hands. I guess it was the mysteriousness of it that attracted him, and the reward, too. There was more in it for me as you know—but he never got a hint of that.
It was one evening, nearly four weeks after the murder that he gave me a shock—not meaning to, of course, for even then I'd found out he was the kind that wouldn't hurt a fly. We were talking of Jack Reddy, who we'd seen that evening in the village, the first time since the inquest.
"You know," said Babbitts, "it's queer but I keep thinking of that yarn of Jasper's, that evening in the Gilt Edge."