Trenholm took silent note of the man’s twitching facial muscles and his unhealthy pallor.
“Very well,” he said. “I will send for Martha. Wait—no, go on,” as Corbin stopped reluctantly at the first injunction, and, giving Trenholm no time to reconsider his second order, he disappeared in the direction of the kitchen.
Trenholm hung up his hat and overcoat in the closet off the living room in deep thought. He had intended questioning Corbin as to the hours of receiving mail at Abbott’s Lodge, but he shrewdly suspected that Martha would prove a more reliable source of information, and so dismissed the caretaker with the question unasked.
Trenholm’s low tap on Mrs. Nash’s bedroom door brought Somers in response. On recognizing the sheriff she drew back and held the door more widely open.
“My mistress is expecting you,” she said. “Come in, sir.”
It was the first time Mrs. Nash had met Guy Trenholm face to face, though each had had glimpses of the other during Mrs. Nash’s occasional visits to Abbott’s Lodge in the past. Under pretense of much languor, she was slow in offering him her hand and equally slow in releasing his. Trenholm’s pressure on her icy fingers forced her rings into her flesh, but aside from a slight, very slight, intake of her breath, she gave no sign of how much he hurt her.
“Please take that chair,” she said, as Somers, obedient to previous instructions, pushed forward the chair Miriam had occupied the night before and in which she had found the thirteenth letter. “You will fill it nicely, Mr. Trenholm; it is made for such big frames as you and my husband. I feel,” she added as he kept a discreet silence, waiting for her to open the interview, “that you and I should be old acquaintances; I have heard so many nice things about you from both Paul and his father.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Nash!” Trenholm sat back and eyed her gravely. Her rouge was cleverly applied and her hair was becomingly dressed. But to his critical mind there was something unnatural in the high notes of her voice, in the constant tremble of her hand, which, strive as she did, she could not control. “I have frequently hoped to meet you, and frankly”—with a disarming smile—“particularly after your experiences last night.”
“You come directly to the point,” she remarked. “I can only tell you that, after Miss Ward left me, I closed my eyes—for a few minutes only—and opened them to find the room in darkness, to feel some one creeping to my bedside, the touch of the beard on my hand—” The shrug of her shoulders was eloquent. “Have you, Sheriff Trenholm, discovered the identity of the intruder?”
He shook his head. “I must admit failure,” he said. “Give me a little more time.”