Suddenly she felt a reluctance to go to the crib. That was queer, because she had seen death regularly for many years, in a thousand forms. Jessie had feared death only three times in her life, when her parents died and when she received the telegram from the War Department about Clem. So it was love, perhaps, that made the difference... because it was she who had tended his unhealed navel... because it was on her face that he had kept his bright new eyes fixed with such absolute trust while she fed him.
Let him not be there, she prayed.
“It’s all right, Jessie,” Richard Queen’s voice murmured close to her. “The little boy’s been taken away.”
He knew, God bless him.
She walked over to the crib blindly. But then she shook her head clear and looked.
The expensive pillow was at the foot of the crib, one corner doubled over where it lay against the footboard.
The lace-edged pillowcase was spotless.
Jessie frowned. “It must have flipped over when I tossed it aside.”
“Borcher, turn it over for Miss Sherwood,” Chief Pearl said.
The Taugus detective took the lace between thumb and forefinger at one corner and turned the pillow carefully over.
The other side was spotless, too.
“But I don’t understand,” Jessie said. “I saw it with my own eyes. I couldn’t possibly have been mistaken.”
“Miss Sherwood.” The voice of the man from the State’s Attorney’s office was unpleasantly polite. “You would have us believe that you had your attention fixed on this pillow for no more than a second or two, in a room illuminated only by a dim baseboard nightlight, and not only saw a handprint on the pillow, but saw it clearly enough to be able to say that it seemed made by a human hand filthy with dust?”
“I can’t help what you believe,” Jessie said. “That’s what I saw.”
“It would be a feat of observation even if we found the handprint to back it up,” the tieless man said. “But as you see, Miss Sherwood, there’s not a mark on either side of the pillow. Isn’t it possible, in your shock and excitement — and the feeble light in the room — that it was an optical illusion? Something you imagined you saw that never was here?”
“I’ve never had an optical illusion in my life. I saw it just as I’ve described it.”
“You stick to that? You don’t want to reconsider your recollection?”
“I most certainly do not.”
The tieless man seemed displeased. He and Chief Pearl conferred. The old man caught Jessie’s eye and smiled.
Then they went to the window overlooking the driveway, where a man was doing something with some bottles and a brush, and the tieless man looked out and down while the chief said something about an aluminum extension ladder.
“Ladder?” Jessie blinked over at Richard Queen.
He came quickly to her. “Just like that night last month, Jessie. The same ladder, in fact. Didn’t you notice it standing against the wall when you drove into the driveway?”
“I didn’t drive into the driveway. I left my car on the road.”
“Oh, that was your car.” His face said nothing at all.
“Then that’s how that — that monster’s hand got all dirty! The dust on the ladder while he was climbing up.” Jessie was staring at the pillow. “Why didn’t I notice that before?”
“Notice what, Jessie?” He was instantly alert.
“This isn’t the same pillow slip!”
“Isn’t the same as what?”
“As the one I saw that had the handprint on it. Inspector Queen, this is a different slip.”
The old man looked at her. Then he called his friend and the State’s Attorney’s man over.
“Miss Sherwood says she now notices that this isn’t the same pillowcase that had the handprint on it.”
“It isn’t?” Chief Pearl glanced at the tieless man. “That’s an interesting addition to the story, Merrick.”
The tieless man said to Jessie, “How can you tell?”
“The edging — Mr. Merrick, is it? The other slip was edged with a different kind of lace. Both slipcases are made of very fine batiste, but the edging of the other one was Honiton lace, while this, I think, is an Irish crochet. Anyway, it’s not the same.”
“You’re sure of this, Miss Sherwood?” Merrick demanded.
“Positive.”
“Changed,” Richard Queen remarked. “If you accept Miss Sherwood’s story, somebody removed the soiled case from the pillow afterward and substituted this clean one. It’s a break, Abe.”
The big policeman grunted, looking around the nursery. He pointed to what looked like a drawer in the wall near the door. “Is that a laundry chute, Miss Sherwood?”
“Yes.”
He went over to the wall and opened the chute door, trying to peer down. “Where does this lead to?”
“To the laundry in the basement.”
“Who does the laundry here?”
“Mrs. Smith, Mrs. Sadie Smith.”
“Sadie Smith.” Abe Pearl’s heavy brows bunched. “Who’s she? There’s nobody of that name in the house.”
“She’s an outside laundress from Norwalk. She comes in twice a week to do the hand laundry and ironing for the better things. The... baby’s diapers I’ve been doing myself.” Jessie closed her eyes. Friday was one of Mrs. Smith’s days. Tomorrow — today — she would show up, and she would wash and iron those exquisite little garments of Michael’s...
“Tinny, Borcher.” Chief Pearl’s two detectives came over. “Take a couple of men and split up. Look for a pillowcase with a lace edging, a case with a dirty handprint on it. Cover the laundry basement, hampers, linen closets, fireplaces, garbage — the likely ones first. If you don’t find it, tear the place apart.”
People with watery outlines and sounds that mixed and jangled endlessly kept floating in and out of Jessie’s awareness. She knew she had to sit there and hold on to herself in this strange world outside time, or horrible things would happen. Through it all she strained to hear little Michael’s voice, more than ever convinced by the unsubstantial quality of things that it had all happened in a dream, or a film. Sooner or later there would be a snap, the film would break, and the world would be restored to sanity and rightness.
Occasionally she felt Richard Queen’s touch on her shoulder. Once he put his palm to her forehead. His hand felt dry and cool, and Jessie looked up at him. “Please keep it there: It feels good.” But he took it away after a moment, embarrassed.
One of the fragments involved Sarah Humffrey and their attempts to question her. Jessie heard the commotion going on in the master bedroom without much interest. The frantic woman kept screaming that it was all her fault, that she had killed her baby, her blessed baby, she deserved to die, she was a monster, a criminal, let her die, oh her poor innocent baby. The men’s voices came up and through and around her self-accusing aria in discordant counterpoint, her husband’s by turns soothing, mortified, pleading, like a violin twanging the gamut; Dr. Wicks’s snappish and brittle — he’s the oboe, Jessie thought, pleased with her fancy; the insinuating trombone of Merrick, the Bridgeport man, sliding in and out of the conversation; Chief Pearl’s bass horn underscoring the whole crazy fugue. Finally the men came out, the chief and the State’s Attorney’s man bleak with anger at Dr. Wicks, Alton Humffrey almost female in his distress and irritation.
“She’s not a well woman,” the millionaire kept exclaiming in a high excited voice, oddly unlike the voice Jessie knew. “You’ve got to understand that, gentlemen... my wife has never been strong emotionally... hypersensitive... this shocking experience...”
Dr. Wicks snapped, “Mrs. Humffrey is in a dangerous state of emotional agitation. As a matter of fact, her distress is so severe that I doubt whether her judgment can be relied on. I’m speaking as her physician, gentlemen. If you insist on keeping this up, you’ll have to assume the responsibility.”