“I found it on the floor not far from where he lay. It might have been nearer, or have blown from its place on the desk. For the windows were open. Why is it amazing?”
“Why? Because it is my hand. And because I did not write it.”
“Mildred, for the sake of our reason, be sure of what you say. You must have written more than once to Philip.”
She paused: her teeth bit hard in her lower lip, a tremor of resolve pushed up to her sharp shoulders. Then, in a quiet containment, she answered me.
“I make no mistake, John. I did write, infrequently, to Philip. I never sent him a note by messenger. If I needed to communicate with him quickly, I telephoned, or I wired.”
In her pause, the gilt bustle of the room where we were lunching, the room itself, became a shallow and unreal line upon some darkling density about us. Mildred went on:
“This is a fine version of my hand. But it is not my hand. And there is more superficial evidence than my conviction, that it is not mine. Did you notice the envelope, John?”
Her hand on the table with its débris of crystal and porcelain and silver was steady: mine, taking the paper, trembled.
I looked, and my soul blanched: my hands seemed to crumple and collapse about the flimsy paper. I fumbled at the flap. There was the same lining of green tissue, and the name embossed in tiny letters ... Tissonier ... the Paris stationer from whom I had bought my stock! How could I have failed to notice this before? this fine baronial envelope and the tinted tissue lining which I liked because it gave to the sheer white linen an undertone of privacy symbolic of what an envelope should carry.
“It’s my envelope! It’s one of my envelopes!”