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But things were happening that day of which we had no knowledge. There was a conference at the police station late that afternoon. Bullard, the District Attorney, had come over from Clinton, the county seat, and the sheriff was there, as well as the local police chief, the head of the state police, and several detectives. The men from the press associations and reporters from the various newspapers were kept in an outer room. It was a private conference, with Bullard wanting to hold Arthur pending further investigation and Russell Shand opposing him.

“Where’s your case?” said Shand. “You think you’ve got one, but wait until half a dozen New York big shots come up here and throw it away. Maybe he didn’t like her. Maybe he was sick and tired of paying her that money. Maybe he was here on the island that night. I think he was, at that. Maybe he ran around bareheaded at three o’clock in the morning with a hatchet. He won’t admit it, but say he was for the sake of argument. That hatchet was found before she was killed, and according to Doctor Jamieson the weapon wasn’t a hatchet anyhow, not sharp enough.”

“Hell bent on clearing him, aren’t you?” said Bullard sourly.

“I’ll want to be sure he hasn’t got an alibi before we hold him. That’s all. I’m not willing to be made a fool of, if you are. I admit that sloop story looks queer, but both you and I have done the same thing, Bullard. Why shouldn’t a man go sailing if he’s got a mind to?”

Months later the sheriff told me that story. They had cleared a table, and on it lay the various articles so far collected: my scissors, the broken lock from our toolshed, what was left of Arthur’s hat, and the initial “A,” now glued to a card, Juliette’s sodden cigarette case, the wrist watch with its broken strap, and an envelope containing the butt of a cigarette stained with lipstick. There were photographs too, of the scratches on Eagle Rock and of the grave itself, uncovered but with the body still in it, one with the leaves over the face and one without. And something else, which none of us suspected at the time. Somewhere near that log on the hill they had found the print of a woman’s heel, and the plaster cast of it was before them.

The sheriff eyed it, and then pulled a photograph out of his pocket.

“For that matter,” he said, “you’ve got about as good a case against Mrs. Lloyd as you have against the husband. Better, maybe. We don’t know he was here. We know she was.”

“What the devil do you mean?” Bullard snapped.

“Looks like she was parked beside the road near the bridle path the morning the Ransom woman disappeared,” Shand drawled. “We checked up on all cars and roads right off, and if those aren’t her tire marks I’ll eat them. She hasn’t an alibi worth a cent, at that. I called the garage at Millbank and it seems she got the car about eight-thirty or so the morning of the murder. She called the Lloyd house before that. Sallie Anderson, over at Millbank, remembers the call.”

There was a long silence, according to his account.

“That’s ridiculous,” said Bullard finally. “She’s a nice woman. I’ve met her. I’ve a sister at Millbank.”

“That’s the trouble with it,” said the sheriff. “All these people are nice people. Marcia Lloyd is a damn’ fine girl. I’ve known her since she was a baby. And Arthur Lloyd’s no killer.” He leaned over and picked up the lock. “All along,” he said, “you fellows have been leaving out the two things that bother me most. First, who got into that top floor at the Lloyd house and tore it to pieces? What were they after? And second, what brought the Ransom woman here? Money? She could have seen Arthur Lloyd in New York. Looks as though she was scared when she came; and she wasn’t scared of the Lloyds, or she wouldn’t have come here.”

Bullard stirred irritably.

“You’ve got to take the general picture, Shand,” he said. “If we can break down his alibi we’ve got him. He had a motive. Who else had? His wife? Maybe you can see her burying that body, but I can’t. And whoever killed her buried her. Knew where to look for her and buried her. Don’t forget that.”

“Maybe. Maybe not,” said the sheriff, and the meeting broke up.

They went across the street to a restaurant for dinner. Bullard was hungry and ate enormously; but the sheriff only ate a sandwich and drank a glass of milk.

“Too much on my mind,” Shand told me later. “Seemed like my stomach had sort of shut up.”

But Bullard had it all settled by that time. He wasn’t worrying.

Even that meal, however, was not to be entirely peaceful. They were still at the table when Fred Martin came in, looking for them, and Fred had a story to tell.

On the morning of the murder he had seen a woman cut across the corner of the course. She was too far away to recognize, but she had carried a walking stick of some kind. She had not gone directly toward the bridle path, but had disappeared into the woods in that direction.

“I didn’t think anything of it at the time,” he said, “although it was pretty early. About eight-thirty. But I hear the doc says Mrs. Ransom was struck with a heavy weapon, and if what she was carrying was a golf club—Well, I thought I’d tell you anyway.”

“No woman did this job,” said Bullard, wiping his mouth with his napkin.

The sheriff was interested. Fred was definitely of the opinion that it was a member of the summer colony. The native women were not given to early walks in the hills.

“Kinda queer at that, Fred,” he said. “Nobody’s come forward and said she was there. The villagers don’t use that path. They’ve got other things to do. And we’ve more or less checked up on the summer folks. Not all of them here yet, and only one or two regular walkers among them. Seems to me if she knew nothing she’d come out and say so. Who’d be likely to take a walk like that?”

Fred looked uncomfortable.

“Well,” he said, “there’s Miss Lloyd. She gets about quite a lot. And Mrs. Hutchinson. I suppose we can leave out the older women. They don’t walk.”

Bullard roused at that.

“Miss Lloyd?” he said. “That’s the sister, isn’t it? I’d like to see her, Shand. Maybe she’s got a motive too. I’d like to bet she hated the Ransom woman like poison.”

The result was a visit from them both that night. I had managed to get down to dinner, and we were all in the library, Arthur pacing the floor, Mary Lou knitting, and I absently playing solitaire, when they were announced.

Bullard took the lead, and lost no time in doing it. He started with me.

“I understand you did not leave the house at all the morning Mrs. Ransom left for that ride,” he said, his eyes like small bright black buttons.

I was surprised.

“Why, no,” I said. “She had taken the car. I couldn’t.”

“You didn’t happen to take a walk?”

“A walk? No.”

“I suppose you can prove that?”

“You can ask the servants.”

I was puzzled rather than resentful, but I saw Arthur make an impatient gesture.

“Why question my sister?” he demanded. “What has she got to do with it?”

Bullard merely smiled, not too pleasantly.

“Let me do this my own way, Mr. Lloyd,” he said. “I imagine we all want the facts. There is a path leading up into the hills from the golf course, isn’t there?”

“Yes.”

“You didn’t take that path that morning? The morning of the murder?”

“I’ve already said I did not.”

“Yet Fred Martin, your golf professional, says you did just that.”

I could only stare at him. The sheriff looked irritated; Bullard kept his bland smile, although he shifted his tactics.

“You didn’t like Mrs. Ransom very much, did you?” he inquired, almost gently.

“I did not. But if all this means that you think I killed her—” I began angrily.

He held up a plump white hand.

“I haven’t said anything of the sort, Miss Lloyd,” he said, looking almost shocked. “I am only here, as the prosecuting attorney of this county, to ask some questions.”

“As for instance?” said Arthur, scowling over his pipe.

He turned his attention to Arthur.

“Well, what brought Mrs. Ransom here in the first place? Was there any particular reason why she came back just now? I understand—”

He paused, and Arthur flushed. I saw that he was trying to control himself.

“I suppose you’ve got to do this,” he said, “but it’s damned unpleasant. Yes, there was a reason. It was money.”

“Money?”

“That’s what I said. I’ve been paying her alimony. A lot of it. She took it into her head that she wanted a lump sum instead. That’s all there is to it.”

“I see,” said Bullard, looking smug. “Alimony, eh? And a lot of it. Rather a—” He checked himself. “And so, instead of going to you, she came to your sister? Isn’t that unusual?”

“How do I know what’s usual in such circumstances?” said Arthur furiously. “All I know is that she damned well didn’t get it.”

“You refused?”

It was a trap, and Arthur almost fell into it. He caught himself in time, however.

“I called my sister over the long-distance telephone and said it was impossible. You can check the call if you want to.”

They left soon after that. Arthur was in a white rage, and Mary Lou was blazingly indignant.

“Well, of all things,” she said, as the door closed behind them. “You’d think they actually suspected you, Arthur, or Marcia.”

“Perhaps they do, my dear,” said Arthur patiently. “Perhaps they do.”

I passed a rotten night. It had rained that evening, and the overflow from the pond roared like a small Niagara. Also my ankle was bothering me again. But what kept me awake was a question from the sheriff, after Bullard had gone out to the car.

“Tell me something, Marcia,” he said. “Does Mrs. Hutchinson use a pretty heavy lipstick?”

“Yes, what about it?”

He did not answer me. He patted my back and went away. But there was a reason behind that question; and I lay awake and worried over it.

It was still worrying me the next morning. Lucy, who might at a distance, although taller, be mistaken for me. Lucy, who often walked in the hills, and sometimes, after a game of golf, carried a club with her instead of a stick. Lucy, with her mouth heavily made up, so that she stained every cigarette she smoked. And Lucy, who hated Juliette.

I could still see her the evening she came in, in her white dress and jade earrings. She had been terrified that day, trembling.

“It’s been plain hell,” she had said. But after all it had been a long time since she had been in love with Arthur. I thought now that her fright had been for herself, not for him.

What was I to do? If I told the sheriff about it she could counter with her story about Arthur, and seeing him on the drive.

In the end I took it to Arthur himself. Mary Lou was still asleep, and he was shaving in the bathroom. I sat on the edge of the bathtub and told him, and at first he pooh-poohed the idea.

“Lucy!” he said. “You’re losing your mind, Marcia.”

He blew out one cheek to run the razor over it, and I wanted to shout.

“That’s too easy, Arthur. She’s strong as a horse. She often walks in the hills. And she was jealous of Juliette. Bob liked her a lot, at one time.”

He merely rinsed his razor and leaning over patted me condescendingly.

“Do all women hate all other women?” he inquired, and grinned at me in much his old fashion. “Keep out of this, my girl. We don’t hide behind the Lucy’s of this world, do we?”

“But if she did it?”

“Don’t be a little fool. No woman did this, Marcia. Look at the facts. She was not only killed. Somebody mounted that mare and, carrying her, rode down to the lake. That took strength. I couldn’t have done it myself, and I’m not feeble.”

That was on Sunday, and I went to early service that morning. I could not face a churchful of well-dressed and curious people at eleven o’clock. But as I came out I saw the sheriff and two deputies pass in a car, and realized that the law knew no Sabbath.

I did not go directly home. Instead, I drove out to Fred Martin’s cottage, a small one on the golf club grounds, and found him washing the breakfast dishes. Dorothy, his young wife, was still in bed. She was soon to have a child, and Fred adored her. He made a sign to me when he saw me, and closed the door before he took off his apron and joined me on the porch.

“Just letting the wife rest,” he said. “Ground’s too soft for golf today anyhow, after the rain. Well, what can I do for you?”

“I want to ask you something, Fred. Did you tell the District Attorney you saw me cutting across the course the morning Mrs. Ransom was killed?”

He almost leaped out of his skin.

“Godamighty, no!” he said. “I told them I saw a woman there. Then they wanted to know who walked up that way now and then, and I told them. That’s all there was to it.”

I believed him. There was something sturdy and honest about him. And he was well liked. He had been at the club for five or six years, and many of the members he knew in Palm Beach in the winter as well. Each summer I took a few driving lessons from him, and nothing was more familiar than his muscular figure, in old trousers and a sweater.

“See what you did that time?” he would say. “Tried to kill the ball, that’s all. What’s wrong? Don’t you like it?”

But that morning he was not quite himself. I thought he had lost some of his old directness.

“If you know anything you ought to tell it. We’re dealing with a murder, Fred,” I said.

“I realize that, all right. But I didn’t really see this woman. She was a long ways off. I think she wore a yellow sweater, but that’s all I know.”

“A yellow sweater!” I said. “I’ve got one myself!”

“I know that too,” he said, and lapsed into silence.

There was nothing to be gained by staying, and so I left, with Fred putting me into the car and standing by until I had gone. But I was not very happy as I drove home. Yellow was a popular color this year, and I knew that Lucy also had a yellow sweater.

Lizzie had the usual country Sunday dinner that day, chicken and ice cream; but I could not eat, nor did Arthur. In the afternoon I drove up into the hills. The weather was beautiful, and I saw Marjorie Pendexter and Howard Brooks, evidently bound on a climbing expedition, and waved at them. But I had been out for two hours before I found Allen Pell.