"You must be hungry," she rushed on. "Put your suitcase in the room and wash up." She turned her back to me and hurried into the kitchen.
I was hungry. The memory of her homey cooking did it. I glanced around the front room. Nothing had changed, I thought. Then I noticed the framed portrait of my father and his three brothers was hanging where the large print of a basket of fruit used to hang. The basket of fruit picture was where the portrait should have been, and it was entirely too big a picture for that spot. I would never have thought Aunt Matilda could tolerate anything out of proportion. And the darker area of wallpaper where the fruit picture had prevented fading stood out like a sore thumb.
I looked around the room for other changes. The boat picture that had hung to the right of the front door was not there. On the floor under where it should have been I caught the flash of light from a shard of glass. Next to it, the drape framing the window was not hanging right.
On impulse I went over and peeked behind the drape. There, leaning against the wall, was the boat picture with fragments of splintered glass still in it.
From the evidence it appeared that Aunt Matilda had either been trying to hang the picture where it belonged, or taking it down, and it had slipped out of her hands and fallen, and she had hidden it behind the drape and hastily swept up the broken glass.
But why? Even granting that Aunt Matilda might behave in such an erratic fashion (which was obvious from the evidence), I couldn't imagine a sensible reason.
It occurred to me, facetiously, that she might have gone in for pictures of musclemen, and, seeing me coming up the street, she had rushed them into hiding and brought out the old pictures.
That could account for the evidence—except for one thing. I hadn't dallied. She could not possibly have seen me earlier than sixty seconds before I came up the front walk.
Still, the telegrapher at the depot could have called her and told her I was here when he saw me get off the train.