Leaving that for her to consider at leisure, I marched off. Reflecting that if the downstairs Daisy was the counterfeit she had had plenty of time to discard her masquerade, and that therefore peeking through keyholes would have been wasted effort, I decided on a swift gallop around the field before returning to G.H.Q. The result was negative. I dispensed with such niceties as knocking on doors. The other three rooms on the ground floor, including the music room, were uninhabited. In a sitting room one flight up, two doors from the library, I flushed Dunn and his wife, and Prescott, apparently discussing their troubles. Mrs. Hawthorne’s apartment on the floor above was empty. Andy Dunn and Celia Fleet saw me enter it and leave it, from a bench they were occupying in the hall. They didn’t look interrupted; evidently they weren’t discussing anything, just sitting close enough to touch. In the room across the hall where I had found the library edition of Daisy when Wolfe sent me after her, May Hawthorne was lying on a bed with her bare feet protruding beyond the hem of the veteran gown, and her eyes closed. She asked, “Who is it?” without moving or opening her eyes, and I said, “Nobody much,” and went out again.
That left two to go. I found them together, in a room at the street end of the corridor. April was stretched out on a chaise longue, with her arms flung above her head, dressed in a green thing of thin silk which smoothed itself out on her high spots like a soft skin, and wearing no veil. Sara was on a chair near her, with a book open. Sara stared at me. April’s head didn’t move, but she got me from the corner of her eyes.
She said, “You might knock, you know. Does that man want me again?”
“No, I’m just looking.”
“Thank heaven.” She sighed with relief. “My niece is reading The Cherry Orchard’ to me. Of course I know it by heart. Would you care to listen?”
I said no, much obliged, and departed. Having observed a writing desk in Daisy Hawthorne’s suit, I returned there, found some paper in a drawer, got out my pen and sat down and wrote:
Downstairs Daisy disappeared. Told Naomi would return shortly but hasn’t. Naomi, waiting for her return, scorns you and says I’m not funny. Stauffer is lurking behind a curtain ten feet from her, God knows why. Made a survey and everyone accounted for. Sara is reading “The Cherry Orchard” (Chekhov) to April. Either one could have done it. I resign.
I blotted it, went out and descended to the library, and handed it to Wolfe, saying:
“I doubt if that’s it. It’s the only one I left in the living room.”
As he read it I got myself into a chair, this time one at the end of the desk, as far as practical from our own Daisy. I glanced at her sitting there behind her screen, and then looked somewhere else.