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And Dundee, wondering, beginning to doubt his own conviction a little that conviction which had sprung full-grown out of Nita's strange, informal will, and which had seemed to explain everything followed Lydia Carr from her basement room to the bedroom in which Nita had been murdered.... "See this!" and Lydia Carr snatched up the powder box from the dressing-table.
Nita disappeared behind a screen, where, on the wash-stand, in lieu of a buffet, the good things from the birthday box were arranged on tin-box covers and wooden plates. There were nine china plates for the twelve guests, and a cup and a sherbet glass apiece, which is an abundance for any three-course supper, however elaborate.
Of course he had ruefully told himself Nita Leigh might have been lucky or unlucky enough to run across documentary proof of one of the scandals of which Gladys Earle had told her, or had dared to blackmail her victim by dark hints, as Miss Earle had unconsciously suggested to her. But this new development could not be ignored.
The first member of the Fortescue household who met Broussard gave him a rapturous greeting. This was Kettle, who opened the massive doors to visitors. "Hi! Mr. Broussard, I cert'ny is glad to see you, and Miss 'Nita, she is right heah in the drawin'-room, and I spect she jump fer joy when she see you!" shouted Kettle, who was a child of nature and spoke the truth as he saw it.
"You were burned recently, Lydia?" Dundee asked pityingly. "That's my business!" the woman astounded him by retorting harshly. "How did it happen, Lydia?" Dundee persisted, puzzled. "I had an accident. It was my own fault." Lois Dunlap's kind grey eyes caught and held Dundee's firmly. "I think, if Nita could speak to you now, Mr.
The servants didn't know what to do, and they stood around helpless, till Miss Major and Mrs. Albright went into the kitchen and began to get breakfast. Miss Nita telephoned to Mr. Randolph, and he came up and appointed Miss Major to have charge of things till they could get new officers. In the middle of the forenoon who should appear but Mrs. Dick! Mrs. Tenney, I should say.
"Oh, that old bell!" complained Nita, pouting. Cologne drew Dorothy over in the corner. "Ask Tavia about the man on the horse," she whispered. "She got a letter from him!"
Whereupon everybody laughed, and Nita hugged Roberta and assured her that there was no way out of it. "Somebody go and get Janet's costume," she ordered, "and any one who has a spare minute can be fitting it over. We shall have to have an extra rehearsal to-morrow of the parts where Ermengarde comes in. Go on now, Sara. Use Lucile's muff for the monkey."
Lydia was curiously resentful. "He wasn't ever here. Nita said to me she wished Mr. Peter liked her as well as Mis' Lois did." "Thursday night?" "Mr. Ralph Hammond took her somewhere to dinner, to some other town, I think, but I wasn't awake when they got home. Nita never would let me set up for her said I needed my rest. So I always went to bed early." "And yesterday Friday?"
"Where were you during the fifteen minutes or so before your mistress was shot, Lydia?" "I was down in my room in the basement," the woman answered. "Nita I mean Miss Nita was going to get Judge Marshall to build me a room on the top floor. She hated for me to have to sleep in the basement, but I didn't mind." "You were not required to be on duty for the party?"
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