“As it turned out, yes; but my idea was that if the chain was repaired no one would suspect a locket had been wrenched from it,” explained Richards. “Then it would not have mattered where the watch was found.”
Hale shook his head. “You laid yourself open to grave suspicion,” he said. “I now understand your actions and your constrained manner, but—” He stopped. “I missed a playing card out of my solitaire pack several days ago, a Knave of Hearts, to be exact, on which I had scratched the combination of my safe.”
“Robert!” The ejaculation came from Mrs. Hale and her husband turned to her testily.
“I am troubled with amnesia,” he said. “It is just a touch, but I am sensitive about having it known or suspected, and so occasionally I jot down figures and numbers. I play solitaire so continuously that I am never without the safe-combination; but on Friday I missed the card and the next day asked Maud, or shall we say Jim Turner,”—and he indicated the pseudo-maid—“if she had seen the card. She brought it to me later, stating that she had found it on your dresser, Richards, and it led me to believe that you had a hand in Austin’s murder.”
“Is that why you put a dictograph in our boudoir?” asked Richards.
“Yes,” Hale admitted. “I went to the Burroughs Agency, explained my suspicions, and they installed it.”
Polly Davis broke her long silence. “I heard you talking to Mr. Burroughs,” she explained. “I went to the detective agency to ask them to undertake an investigation for me, but your presence, Mr. Hale, frightened me away.” She paused and looked at Judith and her father. “From having seen you on the stairs Tuesday night, Mr. Hale, I began to suspect that you might have killed Austin. I knew that you and he had often quarreled in the past—”
“How about John’s scenes with his stepson?” inquired Hale dryly, and Polly changed color, but she ignored his question as she went bravely on.
“Your offer to increase my salary and your unsolicited loan, Judith, increased my suspicion,” she stated. “I thought that you were trying to bribe me. Then your threat about the locket—”
“What was in the locket?” asked Richards and his father-in-law simultaneously.