“Anyhow, Winslow happened to look out the window again about twenty minutes later, and your husband was no longer in the sling chair. He was lying on his face on the terrace. Apparently he had stood up, taken a step or two, and collapsed. Winslow was alarmed, as you might expect, and he hurried over. To put it bluntly, if you will excuse me, your husband was dead. Before dying, he had been very ill. To his stomach, I mean.”
Hardy stopped, watching Mrs. Dearly, and Mrs. Dearly continued to stare through the bright glass into the bright yard. Her face in profile was beautiful and composed. It was almost, Hardy thought, serene. Being basically an old-fashioned man, he found an old-fashioned simile in his head: she has a face like a cameo, he thought.
“I’ve warned him and warned him about it,” she said at last.
“About what, Mrs. Dearly?”
“Working so hard in the hot sun. He loved working in the yard, you know, and he insisted on spending practically every week-end at it. Sometimes, whenever he could, week days also. He was getting too old for such work, especially in the hot sun. He had a stroke, I guess. A heat stroke or something. Doesn’t someone with a heat stroke become violently ill to his stomach?”
“I think so. I’m not sure about it.”
“Where is my husband now? His body, I mean. And why are the police involved? Is it normal for the police to be involved in such a matter?”
“We were called by the doctor who was summoned by Mr. Winslow.”
“Why should the doctor call the police?”
“He thought it wise, considering the circumstances of the death. He was not prepared to certify the cause without an autopsy.”
“An autopsy? Is that where Cal is? Have you taken him away somewhere for an autopsy?”
“Yes. Sorry. We tried to locate you, but we couldn’t.”
“Can you perform an autopsy on my husband without my permission?”
“If you want to make an issue of it, we can get an order. But it would be much better if you would simply agree. I don’t see why you shouldn’t.”
“Since you will obviously do it in any event, I might just as well agree. You are right, anyway. There is no reason why I shouldn’t.”
“Thank you. The body will be returned to you as soon as possible.” He paused for a moment, apparently trying to put in order the words to express properly what needed to be said. “I must say that I admire the way you are taking this. I was afraid it might be all ordeal.”
She turned her face toward him then, lighted by the sun on one side and softened by shadows on the other. Her lips assumed the shape of the merest smile.
“I’m not the hysterical type, Lieutenant. I suppose I’m a bit numb, really. I can hardly believe that Cal is dead. It’s often that way when someone dies suddenly, isn’t it? Later it will strike me fully and all at once.”
“Will you be all right here alone? It’s a large house, but apparently there are no servants around.”
“We have a cook and a housekeeper, but they were given the week-end off. Cal and I were on our own for two days.”
“Too bad. If someone had been around, something might have been done in time to save him.”
“Yes. Poor Cal. Dying alone like that. I think, Lieutenant, if you don’t mind, that I would like to go upstairs. Is there anything more you want of me?”
“No. I’m finished here. I can’t tell you how sorry I am that we had to intrude this way.”
“Not at all. Under the circumstances, as you said, there was nothing else you could do.”
“You’re gracious to say so. Goodbye, Mrs. Dearly.”
“Goodbye, Lieutenant. Please find your own way out.”
“Yes. Of course.”
He looked thin and worn, almost ravaged, in his wilted seersucker. His right hand moved again in that hesitant gesture as he turned and went out of the room.
Standing quite still, listening, Mrs. Dearly heard his steps receding in the hall, then the front door closing behind him. She continued to stand there, listening intently. She had heard the movements of the police car and the Jaguar in the drive, and now, after several minutes, she heard the police car in the street, its engine starting and the swiftly diminishing sound of it as it sped away.
The silence of the house gathered around her, and she turned in silence and went through the hall into the kitchen and downstairs from the kitchen into the basement. She walked directly to the wall to her left, the wall toward the side yard where the power mower stood at rest between the clipped and shaggy grass; and she was just reaching overhead for the circular handle of a valve when someone spoke behind her.
“I don’t believe I’d do that if I were you, Mrs. Dearly,” the voice said.
How strange it was! she thought afterward. Following the first moment of terror, when her breath stopped and her heart withered, she was immediately calm and lucid and without any fear whatever. She thought clearly before turning around that Douglas must surely be kept a secret now, however difficult it might be, for he would be considered a motive at the very least, if not a conspirator — and the funny thing about it was that Douglas was not a motive at all, but only a kind of fringe benefit.
“I thought you had gone, Lieutenant,” she said.
“Dickson went,” he said. “As for me, I must confess to intruding again. I came in through the basement window there.”
He walked over and stood beside her, looking up at the valve she had intended to turn. To the right of the valve, slanting down toward the basement floor, were about six feet of pipe that made a right turn, by means of an elbow joint, and passed through the concrete foundation.
The Lieutenant began again. “While I was waiting for you to come home this afternoon from wherever you were, I got to wondering how your husband might have been poisoned — if he was poisoned, which was at least a possibility. In a container of something to drink, perhaps? In something he ate, perhaps? But that would have been dangerous, and foolishly so. The container to be analyzed. The remains of the food, ditto. Then I walked along the side of the house, and I noticed that the ground under the outside faucet was damp — and it came to me. What does the kind of man who loves working in the yard, as your husband did, almost invariably do when he gets hot and thirsty? He takes a drink from the outside faucet. Usually from his cupped hands. That’s what your husband did, Mrs. Dearly, and that’s what you knew he would do.”
The Lieutenant paused, still staring up at the valve with an expression of admiration, almost of wonder. Perhaps he was waiting for Mrs. Dearly to speak, but at the moment Mrs. Dearly did not feel like speaking.
“It was clever,” he went on. “You’re a clever woman, Mrs. Dearly. Between that inside valve and the outside faucet there are six feet of one-inch pipe. It was almost perfect for your purpose, wasn’t it? A perfect container. First, you closed the inside valve and drained the six feet of pipe. This you did merely by opening the outside faucet, letting the water in the pipe flow out, then closing the faucet afterward. Then, with a wrench, you disconnected the six feet of pipe below the valve and put into the pipe, your perfect container, whatever you used to kill your husband. This done, you reconnected the pipe to the valve, opening the valve to let water run through and fill the pipe. By closing the valve after the pipe was filled, you had a deadly liquid ready to run from the outside faucet whenever it was opened.
“It wouldn’t run long or as freely as it would have run with the valve open, of course, for six feet of one-inch pipe will hold by my arithmetic only about one quart of water. But that was enough. It was sufficient to give your husband a long, fatal drink. And now you have come down here to open the valve again and to flush from the pipe what may be left of the poison. What kind of poison did you use, Mrs. Dearly? Well, never mind. I don’t expect you to tell me. Something nearly tasteless, of course, and soluble in water. We’ll find out.”