It’s that pillowslip.
When Jessie thought about the pillowslip, something inside cringed and curled up. She tried not to think of it, but the more she tried the faster it bounced back. She had been so positive the doctored slip was just like the one she had seen. But it hadn’t been. One look, and Humffrey had known it was a forgery. How could he have known? What hadn’t she noticed, or forgotten? Maybe if she could remember it now... That would be helping. That would be making it up to Richard!
So Jessie shut her eyes tight and thought and thought, right there in the closet, seeing the nursery again, seeing herself stooping over the crib in the nightlight, the pillow almost completely covering the motionless little body... the pillowcase... the pillowcase...
But she could not add anything to the pillowcase. It remained in her mind’s eye as she thought she had seen it that night.
She dropped the dress to the floor and went over to the chintz-backed maple chair near the window, where she could look out at her postage-stamp back garden. The morning-glories were still in bloom, and the petunias; the berries on the dogwood tree were big and shiny and red, and disappearing fast down the gullets of the birds; and Jessie thought, I will do it for him. I will. So she sat there and thought, desperately.
How had that monster disposed of the pillowslip? He hadn’t burned it, he hadn’t cut it to pieces... He had been under pressure, the pressure of his own guilt, the pressure of his wife’s hysterics, the pressure of Dr. Wicks’s presence, the pressure of the police-on-the-way... Pressure. Pressure makes people do things quickly, without much thought. Richard had remarked himself Wednesday night that Humffrey had had only one thought in mind, “to get rid of the pillowcase in the quickest and easiest way.”
Suppose I’d been the one, Jessie thought with a shudder.
Suppose I’ve smothered the baby and the baby’s body has been found by that nosy nurse and the house is in confusion and Dr. Wicks is there and the police are coming and suddenly, like a dash of seawater, I notice the pillow with my dirty handprint on the slip. It mustn’t be found... they’ll know it was murder... get rid of the slip quick, quick... is that someone coming? whose voice is that? I mustn’t be found in here... I’m in the nursery — I’ve got to get rid of it — got to hide it — where? where?
The laundry chute!
Now wait, Jessie said to her racing pulse, wait, wait, that came too easy....
Easy? But that’s just it. The easiest way! One step to the door of the chute, one flip of the wrist, one shove, another flip of the wrist... and the pillowslip is gone. Gone down into the basement, into the laundry-sized canvas hamper under the chute opening... gone to mingle with the rest of the household’s soiled laundry. The easiest, the quickest way to get rid of it.
At least temporarily.
Later — later I’ll get hold of it, destroy it. As soon as I can. As soon as I can get down into the basement plausibly, safely...
And suppose just then the police arrived. And you couldn’t, you simply couldn’t call attention to yourself by disappearing. Not with a hysterical wife needing attention, policemen’s questions to be answered, the dead little body in the crib... not with the awful guilt clamoring to be guarded... and the servants downstairs whispering over their coffee, in the path of anyone wanting to get to the basement unseen. And always and constantly the need to hear every whisper, to observe every change of expression, every coming, every going, to make sure you were still unsuspected...
Jessie frowned. It sounded fine — except for one thing. The police had searched the house thoroughly. “The laundry basement, the hampers...” Chief Pearl had ordered. And they hadn’t found the pillowslip. So maybe...
So maybe they overlooked it.
That’s what must have happened! Jessie thought exultantly. They didn’t find the slip somehow and Alton Humffrey must have died a thousand deaths while they were looking and was reborn a thousand times when they failed to find it, and kept waiting, waiting for them to leave so he could sneak down into the basement and rummage through the canvas hamper and retrieve the fateful piece of batiste. But dawn came, and daylight, and still Abe Pearl’s men were on the premises searching, and still he was afraid to risk being seen going to the basement.
And then, of course, Sadie Smith came, Sadie Smith from Norwalk, driving up in her 1938 Olds that made such a clatter early Tuesday and Friday mornings...
Sadie Smith to do the wash.
Jessie burrowed deeper in the maple chair, surprised to find herself shaking.
For of course after that Alton Humffrey thought he was safe. That day passed, a week, a month, and the pillowslip vanished into the limbo of forgotten things. Sadie Smith had washed the pillowslip along with the other hand laundry, not noticing, or ignoring, the dirty handprint; and that was the end of that.
The end of it.
Jessie sighed.
So much for “helping” Richard.
But wait!
Surely Sadie could not have been deaf and blind to what was going on in the house that Friday. Surely Mrs. Lenihan, or Mrs. Charbedeau, or one of the maids, must have told Sadie about the pillowslip the policemen were turning the house and grounds upside down for. Even if the police had missed it in the hamper, wouldn’t Sadie have been on the lookout for it?
Yes!
Then why hadn’t she found it?
It was still light when Jessie parked before the neat two-story brick housing development in Norwalk. She found Sadie Smith changing into a clean housedress. Mrs. Smith was a stout, very dark woman with brawny forearms and good-humored, shrewd black eyes.
“Miss Sherwood,” she exclaimed. “Well, of all people! Come in! I just got home from work—”
“Oh, dear, maybe I ought to come back some other time, Mrs. Smith. It was thoughtless of me to pop in just before dinner, and without even phoning beforehand.”
“We never eat till eight, nine o’clock. My husband don’t get home till then. You go on into the parlor and set, Miss Sherwood. I’ll fix us some tea.”
“Thank you. But why don’t we have it here in your kitchen? It’s such a charming kitchen, and I get so little chance to be in my own...”
Mrs. Smith said quietly, as she put the kettle on the range, “It’s about the Humffreys, Miss Sherwood, ain’t it?”
“Yes,” Jessie admitted.
“I knew it.” The dark woman seated herself at the other end of the table. “You don’t have to tell me you’re still all bothered about how that little child died. It’s a terrible thing, Miss Sherwood, but he’s dead, and nothing can bring him back. Why don’t you just forget the Humffreys? They ain’t your kind of people.”
“I’d very much like to, but there are reasons why I can’t. Do you mind if I call you Sadie?”
“Not you I don’t,” Mrs. Smith said grimly.
“Do you remember that Friday you came to do the wash, Sadie? The morning after little Michael was found dead?”
“I surely do.”
“Did you run across one of those batiste pillowslips with the delicate lace that day — a slip that was very dirty? In fact, that had the print of a man’s dirty hand on it?”
Sadie Smith cocked an eye at her. “That’s what the detectives kept asking me that day.”
“Oh, they did? Did anyone else ask you about it? I mean... people of the household?”
“Mrs. Lenihan mentioned it to me first thing I set foot in the house. Told me about the child, and said the policemen were turning the house inside out looking for a dirty pillowslip like that. I told her I’d keep an eye out for it, and I did.”