“I dare say you think that we—Kitty and I—take this—this tragedy very calmly, Mr. Holt,” she said.
“I don’t know that I thought about it at all,” I responded.
“Women sometimes wear a mask, Mr. Holt.”
“Yes?”
“It may be for a purpose or it may be by habit.”
“Yes.”
I glanced quickly at Kitty and found her surveying the old lady with sombre eyes from which all the laughter had fled. She at all events had been wearing a mask.
When the two ladies had gone Dr. Crawford and I sat down to a whisky and soda apiece and a cigar. He seemed ill at ease, restless and rather unhappy until I casually reintroduced the subject of the Clevedon mystery, then he seemed in some curious way to brighten up.
“Aye, murder cases,” he said reflectively. “A murder case can be very interesting, you know—morbid but fascinating.”
I agreed without at all grasping his meaning.