Inspector Queen’s Own Case

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.”

“Anyone mention the pillowslip to you besides Mrs. Lenihan and the detectives?”

“No.”

“I take it you never found it.”

“That’s right. Picked that wash over a dozen times, but it just wasn’t there. There’s the kittle!” The stout woman jumped up and began bustling about.

“Were there any pillowslips in the wash that day?” Jessie persisted.

“Nary one.”