“In this instance I haven’t heard the bones rattle,” laughed Mitchell. “But it may be—” he paused abruptly. “That Deane girl bothers me.”
Thorne’s hand, outstretched to grasp his glass tumbler, remained poised in air. “She need not trouble you,” he said, taking up the glass. “I’ve thought over our former conversation about her, Mitchell, very carefully, and have come to the conclusion that I was wrong.” His gray eyes held his companion’s gaze as his clear, resonant voice continued: “I believe that Miss Deane was not in Craig Porter’s bedroom when Brainard was murdered in the room next to his.”
“Where was she then?”
“Perhaps in her own bedroom or downstairs.”
“Then why doesn’t she say so?”
“Because by admitting that she left her patient she would lay herself open to dismissal for neglecting her professional duty.”
Mitchell smiled skeptically. “Better be dismissed as an incompetent nurse than be charged with murder. But you jump to conclusions, doctor. I did not allude to Miss Vera Deane a moment ago, but to her sister, Dorothy.”
“Dorothy!”
“Yes,” continued Mitchell. “I went to the Tribune office this afternoon, and she had the effrontery to tell me that the article Miss Porter threw into the unused well on the side hill was nothing but a ‘cut’ of her photograph.”
“Have you investigated the matter?”