“She was strangled just like Pris?”
“Yes. Apparently the idea was to get a key to Miss Eads’s apartment, since there was a key in the maid’s bag and the bag was taken. Were they to make up the new board of directors, those five women?”
“Yes.”
“But you told her you wouldn’t go to the meeting?”
Mrs. Jaffee’s hands were fists again, but not as tight as before. “And I told her I wouldn’t be a director either. I didn’t want to get mixed up in it in any way at all. I didn’t want to have anything whatever to do with it. She said I seemed to be perfectly willing to accept the dividend checks, and I said certainly I was and I hoped they would keep coming forever, and they probably wouldn’t if I started butting in. I told her I hoped her new arrangement, the board of directors and the president, would work all right, but if it didn’t there was nothing I could do about it.”
“Had she asked you before about coming to a stockholders’ meeting?”
“No, that was the first time. I hadn’t seen her for more than a year. She phoned and came to see me when she heard about Dick’s — my husband’s — death.”
“I thought she was your closest friend.”
“Oh, that was a long time ago.”
“How long?”