“I know, ma’am, and grateful I am for it, too; but I’ve never understood it, ma’am. Was it to save me from being blamed by the wicked police, or was it a dream you had, and the gentleman had, for I’ve heard what he said at the inquest, and it’s muddled my head till I don’t know where I’m standing.”
What I had said and what the gentleman had said! What did the poor thing mean? As I did not dare to show my ignorance, I merely shook my head.
“Never mind what caused us to speak as we did, as long as we helped you. And we did help you? The police never found out what you had to do with this woman’s death, did they?”
“No, ma’am, O no, ma’am. When such a respectable lady as you said that you saw the young lady come into the house in the middle of the night, how was they to disbelieve it. They never asked me if I knew any different.”
“No,” said I, almost struck dumb by my success, but letting no hint of my complacency escape me. “And I did not mean they should. You are a decent woman, Mrs. Boppert, and should not be troubled.”
“Thank you, ma’am. But how did you know she had come to the house before I left. Did you see her?”
I hate a lie as I do poison, but I had to exercise all my Christian principles not to tell one then.
“No,” said I, “I didn’t see her, but I don’t always have to use my eyes to know what is going on in my neighbor’s houses.” Which is true enough, if it is somewhat humiliating to confess it.
“O ma’am, how smart you are, ma’am! I wish I had some smartness in me. But my husband had all that. He was a man—O what’s that?”
“Nothing but the tea-caddy; I knocked it over with my elbow.”
“How I do jump at everything! I’m afraid of my own shadow ever since I saw that poor thing lying under that heap of crockery.”
“I don’t wonder.”
“She must have pulled those things over herself, don’t you think so, ma’am? No one went in there to murder her. But how came she to have those clothes on. She was dressed quite different when I let her in. I say it’s all a muddle, ma’am, and it will be a smart man as can explain it.”
“Or a smart woman,” I thought.
“Did I do wrong, ma’am? That’s what plagues me. She begged so hard to come in, I didn’t know how to shut the door on her. Besides her name was Van Burnam, or so she told me.”
Here was a coil. Subduing my surprise, I remarked:
“If she asked you to let her in, I do not see how you could refuse her. Was it in the morning or late in the afternoon she came?”
“Don’t you know, ma’am? I thought you knew all about it from the way you talked.”
Had I been indiscreet? Could she not bear questioning? Eying her with some severity, I declared in a less familiar tone than any I had yet used:
“Nobody knows more about it than I do, but I do not know just the hour at which this lady came to the house. But I do not ask you to tell me if you do not want to.”
“O ma’am,” she humbly remonstrated, “I am sure I am willing to tell you everything. It was in the afternoon while I was doing the front basement floor.”