“Amongst his things.” McCarty drew a step nearer. “You know he is dead then?”
“Alfred Hughes? Yes, this morning in the papers I see it. So sudden it was! You are his friends, maybe?” She folded the letters and slipped them into the belt of her starched, white nurse’s uniform. “Sit down, please. I cannot long stay away from my patient.”
“We’re taking charge of Alfred Hughes’ belongings and arranging with Mr. Orbit for the funeral.” McCarty explained speciously, as they complied. “You and him were good friends, weren’t you?”
Truda Lindholm shook her blonde head slowly.
“No. I meet him by accident when I go to see my husband, who works across the street from Mr. Orbit’s, and then he waits for me two—three times. If you have read these letters you must know he gets a foolishness in his mind to make a flirtation with me, but it did not please me. He is gone now, poor soul, and so we do not talk about that, no?”
“But you did talk about it, didn’t you, Mrs. Lindholm?” asked McCarty. “You told your husband?”
“Oh, yes, it is right that I tell him.” Her eyes opened wider, but there was no trace of confusion in her tone. “Already I told him that Alfred Hughes followed me, and once he and that friend of his who works next door, they want I should go to a dance with them. Such a nonsense, a married woman! I think it is joost silly but Otto is angry and so I do not tell him any more.”
She spoke with the naïve candor of a child. McCarty continued:
“You did tell him when Hughes wouldn’t stop writing to you, though. When did you see your husband last, Mrs. Lindholm? Thursday evening, was it?”
“Thursday, yes. It is then I tell him. I am tired that I should be bothered and I think he shall speak to Alfred Hughes, but now I am sorry.”