“Why didn’t you take me into your confidence?” asked Penfield, and at his tone of kindly solicitude Anne’s eyes filled with tears.
“I was afraid,” she admitted. “I realized that you suspected me of killing Uncle John and I did not know how to clear myself.”
“One more question,” and Penfield closed his notebook. “How did your fingerprints get on the scalpel?”
“I found the knife under the ferns and laid it back,” she explained. “I thought that Uncle John had gone out of his mind and killed himself and concluded he had thrown the knife through the banisters.”
Penfield rose and buttoned his sack coat. “I must congratulate you, Doctor Curtis, upon your clever handling of this case,” he said. “But for you Mrs. Hull would be under arrest, charged with a most heinous crime.”
Curtis could not see Mrs. Hull’s look of passionate gratitude.
“How can I express myself!” she began incoherently. “The mental anguish I have endured believing that I caused John’s death—Doctor, how can I thank you?”
“Don’t please!” Curtis begged in embarrassment. “I never suspected you. But I did think your daughter, Lucille, had been incited to rob Meredith and was guilty of the greater crime also. I had been told by Meredith that her engagement to Armstrong was an affair of long standing. He also told me that there were rumors in the city of the firm of ‘Hull and Armstrong’ being under financial stress, and that he was morally certain, although without proof, that it had been Armstrong’s crooked methods which threatened to swamp Colonel Hull.” Curtis paused and cleared his throat.
“When you told of having stabbed Meredith,” he continued, “I realized that such a gash, while it would bleed profusely, was not necessarily fatal, and my thoughts turned to Armstrong. He could have witnessed the scene unknown to you.” Curtis paused again. “I knew that he was standing here by me, and under pretense of keeping my balance, I held my fingers over his pulse as I tried out my theory.”
“Clever work, Doctor!” declared Inspector Mitchell admiringly. “But what put you on Miss Lucille Hull’s trail?”