The interviews were written with a devilish cunning that protected the newspapers from danger of libel suit but subtly gave the public to understand that its appetite for a towering figure in the Balfame case was about to be gratified.
There was no doubt that two shots had been fired from the grove simultaneously, and from revolvers of different calibre (picture of tree and gate).
Was one of them—the smaller—fired by a woman? And if so, by what woman?
Not one of the females whose names had been linked at one time or another with the versatile Mr. Balfame but had proved her alibi, and so far as was known—although of course some one as yet unsuspected may have climbed the back fence and hid in the grove—the only two women on the premises were the widow and her extraordinarily plain servant.
Balfame was shot with a .41 revolver. In one of the newspapers it was casually and not too politely remarked that Mrs. Balfame had larger hands and feet than one would expect from her general elegance of figure and aristocratic features, and in the same rambling sentence (this was written by the deeply calculating Mr. Broderick) the public was informed that certain footprints might have been those of a large woman or of a medium sized man. In the next paragraph but one Mrs. Balfame's stately height was again commented upon, but as the public had already been informed that she was an expert at target practice, reiteration of this fact was astutely avoided.
A great deal was said here and there of her composure, her large studiously expressionless grey eyes, her nimble mind that so often routed her inquisitors, but was allied to a temperament of ice and a manifest power of cool and deliberate calculation.
The dullest reader was quickened into the belief that he was the real detective and that his unerring sense had carried him straight to the woman who had hated the murdered man and had quarrelled with him in public a few hours before his death.
The episode of Mrs. Balfame's offer to make her husband a glass of doctored lemonade and the disappearance of both beverage and glass was not mentioned; presumably these bright young men did not believe in digressions or in rousing a curiosity they might not be able to appease. The interview concluded with a maddening hint at immediate developments.
Mrs. Balfame let the papers drop to the floor one by one; when she had finished the last she drew her breath painfully for several moments. The room turned black, and it was cut by rows of bared and menacing teeth, infinitely multiplied.