The Fourth Side of the Triangle

Somehow they managed to shoulder their way through the shouting newsmen.

“I’m sorry, Sergeant,” growled Ashton, “but we’re going down to headquarters all together.”

“You can’t do that, Mr. McKell.”

“Can’t we?”

“There isn’t room in the car—”

“There is in mine.”

“Look, men,” roared the sergeant, “you’ll get your stories later. Mack, hold these croakers off, will you? Let us through!”

“Where’s Dane?”

“Here he is, Mr. McKell!” Judy screamed.

“They’d already left the building.” Dane elbowed his way through. “I’ve phoned their offices.”

“Get out of the way, will you?”

They drove up to police headquarters from the courthouse in the McKell Continental, Velie trying visibly to smooth his feathers. In the lobby he said to the McKells and Judy, “I’m sorry, but you people will have to wait here.”

“Either we all go,” Ashton retorted, “or we all wait until my lawyers get here.”

“That’s not the way we do things, Mr. McKell. Your wife is under arrest—”

Lutetia was standing beside her husband, turned to stone down to the marbled fingers clutching his arm. Dane thought she was going to faint, and he jumped forward to support her on the other side; but she did not. He thought: She’s pretending she isn’t here, that this is all a bad dream. He was not surprised to see her shut her eyes like a child. Then he felt himself shouldered aside by Judy, who slipped her hand into the older woman’s, squeezing it, murmuring something. But Lutetia did not respond.

“Mr. McKell, you going to stand aside?” bellowed the sergeant.

“I am not,” said Ashton. “I know of no state or municipal law forbidding the family and attorneys of an arrested person to be present during the preliminary questioning by the authorities. Unless you allow it, Sergeant, I’m going to insist that my wife be taken before a magistrate at once — you know as well as I that that’s her right until she’s formally charged. Meanwhile, please let us have some place to sit down.”

Sergeant Velie muttered, “Okay. Come on,” and they trooped after him and into Inspector Queen’s office, where he engaged in some hasty, red-eared, whispered explanations. Meanwhile, Ashton handed his wife into a comfortable chair and said to Dane, “Better tell Ramon where we are, so he can tell O’Brien and Heaton when they get here.”

Dane hurried back downstairs. When he returned, he found Inspector Queen talking quietly to Lutetia, with Sergeant Velie standing stormily by. It seemed that Ashton had made a dicker with the Inspector; in return for being allowed to be present during Lutetia’s preliminary questioning, Ashton had agreed not to insist on waiting for the lawyers. Inspector Queen seemed in complete charge of the case now. This, then, was why he had visited the courtroom, what all the whispering and messages at the district attorney’s table had been about.

But why was his mother being held in the murder for which his father had just been acquitted? Dane strained to find out.

“Mrs. McKell, this is as painful to me as it is to you,” the Inspector was saying. “All you have to do is answer some questions to my satisfaction, and that will be that.”

“Whatever I can,” Lutetia whispered. Her tiny hands were clasped about her purse as if it were holding her instead of the other way around.

“And if you want anything, just say so and I’ll have a matron called.”

“Thank you.”

He began.

Her answers tended to be erratic, as if she were not putting her whole mind into the interrogation. Yes, she remembered the night of September 14th. She had had dinner delayed in the hope that her husband might have decided to return home from Washington instead of staying overnight. (Did the merest flush come into her cheeks?) After dinner she had gone to the music room and tried to read. She had dismissed the servants for the night — they all slept out.

“But I found I couldn’t concentrate on Mrs. Oliphant’s novel,” Lutetia said. “So I thought I would catch up on my needlework...” She wandered off into reminiscence. “It reminds me of when I was a girl. I tended to be willful, especially about things like needlework, and my grandmother was quite severe with me about it. ‘When I was a girl,’ she would say, ‘I had to learn spinning and weaving as well.’ I remember when she lay dying. It all came back to her. I suppose she confused me with her sister, after whom I am named, because she said to me, ‘Lutetia, have you carded the flax yet?’ Of course I said, “Yes, dear.’ And it seemed to me she looked pleased. She said to me then, ‘Whatsoever thy hands find to do, do it with all thy might.’”

Dane thought: Damn your girlhood reflections, Mother! You’ll hang yourself.

Inspector Queen had listened patiently. Whether he found Lutetia’s reminiscence of special interest Dane could not tell. The old man waited for a moment, then he cleared his throat. “How long did you spend on your needlework that evening, Mrs. McKell? Can you recall?”

She looked surprised. “I didn’t spend any time at all on my needlework. I said I only thought about doing so.”