“Why did you ask if your father had been murdered in this house?” I said.
“Just because it was the middle of the night.”
“Before your brother, who was the last person you saw last night?”
“Lavinia—Mrs. Watt. She was going to bed, and I said I’d sit up downstairs and read for a while.”
“What time was that?”
“Jeepers, I don’t know.”
“Perhaps I can answer Mr. Shenstone. The hall clock had just struck eleven.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Watt. And you were both asleep when Morris Watt came into the house?”
“Yes.”
“Yes.”
“Neither of you heard his taxi pull up?”
“No.”
“No.”
“Does the family have a second car?”
“An Austin Chummy,” said Edith. “I was just downtown in it.”
“And was that car out last night?”
Both women said not.
“Would it,” I asked, “have been possible to take the Chummy out without your knowledge—after you were both asleep? Neither of you heard Morris’s taxi, remember.”
“That’s true,” said Lavinia. “The Chummy is pretty rackety. Sounds like a motorcycle. I can’t imagine anyone would drive it around in the middle of the night, but I sleep soundly as a rule. I might not have heard it.”
“I certainly would have,” Edith leaped in. “I sleep lightly, and my bedroom is in the back of the house, at the end towards the garage. No one could have taken a car out without my hearing, and last night no one did.”
“Did either of you leave the house between the time you parted and the time Mr. Morris Watt returned?”
“No,” twice.
“And neither of you saw anyone else during that period?”
“No,” said Edith.
“Actually, I did,” Lavinia confessed. “I rang for Nita when I got to bed and had her bring me a cup of cocoa. It would have been about eleven thirty when she brought the cocoa and left.”
“The cocoa was part of your regular bedtime routine?”
“Father didn’t like keeping the servants up that late. So I only did it if he wasn’t home by the time I went to bed. I suppose you’ll think I’m awful going behind his back like that, but I truly didn’t mean any disrespect. And of course I wouldn’t have done it if I had known . . . Oh, excuse me.”
While Lavinia was sobbing into her handkerchief, Edith jumped in.
“He knew you loved him, Vinnie. One just thinks of the strangest things at a time like this. Like the way I laughed at Dad for stringing up a new radio antenna every two weeks. He acted as though with just enough wire stretched in just the right shape, he would be able to receive the one elusive broadcast that would transform his life. And now he’s gone, I don’t feel like laughing one bit, and I really wish he had been able to listen to what he was looking for with all those festoons of wire.”
Here was a new side of the deceased. I put aside my tea and leaned forward with my elbows on my knees.
“Did Digby Watt want his life transformed? From outside, it would seem he had done pretty well.”
“I think . . .” Lavinia pulled herself together, “I think everyone, however successful, wants something they haven’t got. Greener grass and all that.”
“Let’s talk about your late father-in-law, though,” I insisted. “Couldn’t he have bought the greenest grass there is? Or even have hired a lab full of scientists to invent something greener?”
“I don’t know if Edith agrees, but to me he seemed bored. I mean, he never gave me the idea—or Morris, for that matter—that there was anything he was looking forward to doing. Certainly not retiring. I mean, he believed in an afterlife and everything, but in the meantime, while you’re still here, you still have the days and nights to get through.”
“Daddy wasn’t bored,” said Edith. “He was still building and improving his businesses. And—what maybe mattered more to him at this stage—he had his charitable work. I thought he was sad, though. As you know, my mother died two years ago, and that was a cruel blow, but it was more than that.”
“What more?” I asked, getting in just ahead of Lavinia.
“It’s so difficult to say. We sometimes know things without knowing how we know them. Something to do with his faith, perhaps. We’re all churchgoers, but he was the only one of us that really had faith.”
“Morris is a Christian,” said Lavinia. “It’s very sweet of him.”
Edith seemed not to hear her. “I recall some snatch of a sermon or prayer that seemed to hit Dad hard. I think it was just before this Easter. The minister said, ‘Too often we nurse the pain others cause us while blotting from our minds the pain we cause.’ ”
“I hate pain,” said Lavinia. “I don’t even like to think about it.”
“The minister reminded him of someone he’d hurt?” I asked.
“I couldn’t tell,” said Edith. “He was a typical businessman who kept work and home separate. He didn’t want us to worry about what went on at the office. That didn’t mean he had guilty secrets; it was just his generation’s way.” She folded her napkin thoughtfully. “I do know he’d recently started carrying around a little book of inspirational quotations. Now we learn that very book saved him from one of the bullets. Strange, isn’t it? I had a look at it on the weekend. Its message for most days seems to be patience in adversity.”
“Do either of you know if he had received any threats?”
Both women said no.
“Did either of you ever hear him argue or have an angry scene with anyone?”
Again the fair and dark heads shook as one.
“He believed in the duty of cheerfulness,” Edith added. “He was never even bad-humoured that I recall.”
“Nor I.”
“Anyone bad-humoured with him?”
“Mrs. Hubbard—” Lavinia began.
“That’s our cook,” Edith explained.
“—scolds him unmercifully about missing meals, but she dotes on him.”
“No one else?”
“No.”
“This must be maddening for you, Mr. Shenstone,” said Lavinia, “but we just can’t think of anyone wishing Father ill. It seems inconceivable.”
“What about Curtis?”
“Curtis? I wouldn’t say Curtis doted on him, would you, Vinnie?”
“How would one know? Curtis is quiet.” Lavinia dropped her voice to a whisper. “Quiet as a mummy.”
“Works well, though.”
“Very.”
I wrote in my notebook. “So at present the household consists of yourselves, Mr. Morris Watt, Mrs. Hubbard, Nita, and Curtis?”
“That’s right,” said Lavinia.
“Curtis lives over the garage,”