Somers, Mrs. Nash’s maid, greeted Betty in a subdued voice. “Please, Miss Betty,” she said. “Where will I find your aunt? The young woman who let me in declined to come upstairs.”
Betty glanced impatiently at the British maid. “Come this way,” she turned as she spoke, then hesitated and addressed Thompson. “If you see Sheriff Trenholm tell him, please, I must go in this room.”
“Yes, Miss,” and Thompson, considerably relieved by the maid’s opportune arrival, resumed his slow pacing back and forth before the door.
The sound of his voice and Betty’s had carried inside the bedroom, but neither of the two men in it paid the slightest attention. The photographer put up his plates and closed his camera.
“I’ve taken four views, Mr. Trenholm,” he said. “Is that enough?”
Trenholm nodded as he handed the man his flashlight apparatus. “Develop the plates and let me have the prints as quickly as possible,” he directed. “Do you need any assistance?” as the photographer shouldered his camera, tripod, and utility box.
“No, thanks.” In spite of his haste to be gone, the man was careful to walk as far from the undertaker’s couch with its silent figure as the limits of the room permitted. “I’ll get these to you to-night. Where shall I send the photographs? Here, or to your home?”
“My home,” briefly. Trenholm held open the hall door for him to pass through, then spoke a few whispered words to Thompson. Ten minutes later the body of Paul Abbott had been carried downstairs and the casket closed, while arrangements for the funeral went steadily on.
Trenholm listened impassively to Thompson’s flurried delivery of Betty’s message, the latter having forgotten it utterly in his astonishment at finding Trenholm had been in the bedroom at the time Betty wished to enter.
“The casket is not to be opened again,” the sheriff said sternly. “Understand, Thompson—under no circumstances is it to be opened,” and turning he mounted the staircase and found Betty standing at the top landing, waiting for him.