Rolling Stone by Patricia Wentworth Page A

Turners.”
    â€œWell, I don’t care,” said Terry. “It’s Emily I’m thinking about, and she’d hate to have a scandal and one of her guests dragged in—and having to go into a witness-box and swear things, and so should I. So we thought it was a beautiful plan, and I thought it would be quite easy. But it wasn’t—it was quite frightfully horrid.”
    Mr. Ridgefield took out his eyeglass, polished it carefully, and put it back again.
    â€œDo you mind being a little more lucid? I don’t really seem to know what you are talking about.”
    â€œThat’s because it’s so horrid,” said Terry in a drooping voice. “It’s easy enough to say things when they’re nice, but the horrid ones seem to get all tangled up.”
    â€œI’ve noticed that. You had better try and disentangle them.”
    â€œI am trying. The trouble is that there’s a bit at the beginning I don’t want to tell anyone ever—” she saw a small, vivid picture in her own mind of Norah Margesson under the hall lamp with Emily’s pearls in her hands—“and there’s a bit at the end that I don’t want to tell anyone till Tuesday, so I have to begin right in the middle, and that’s what makes it difficult.”
    â€œI can see that. Well, suppose you begin wherever you want to and tell me as much as you can.”
    Terry nodded.
    â€œYes. I woke up in the night—”
    â€œLast night?”
    â€œYes. I woke up and I couldn’t go to sleep again, so I went and looked out of the window. It must have been somewhere round about two, because a clock struck afterwards. And I looked out of the window, and I saw something.”
    Mr. Ridgefield looked at her curiously.
    â€œWhat did you see?”
    Terry flashed him a glance.
    â€œThat’s what I’m not telling—not to anyone—not till Tuesday.”
    â€œDear me,” said Mr. Ridgefield. “Not very lucid—are you? I suppose you couldn’t make it all a little clearer?”
    Terry blinked fiercely. You can’t drive a car and cry at the same time. Anyhow, what was there to cry about? She didn’t know, but it would have been very comforting to weep on a kind shoulder. She said despising things to herself and blinked again.
    â€œThat was the plan,” she said. “You see, I saw something—out of the window—and I thought if I told everyone, then the person who had taken the picture would know that I knew, and if the picture came back, I wouldn’t say anything ever, but if it didn’t come back, then I should have to go to the police on Tuesday.”
    â€œTuesday?”
    â€œTuesday.”
    â€œDay after tomorrow?”
    â€œDay after tomorrow.”
    â€œReally—my dear child! May one ask why day after tomorrow?”
    â€œTo give the person who took the picture the chance of sending it back.”
    Mr. Ridgefield gazed with astonishment.
    â€œTerry—are you serious?”
    â€œOh yes ,” said Terry, in a tone of heartfelt unhappiness.
    â€œYou really saw something?”
    â€œI really saw something.”
    Mr. Ridgefield assumed a brisk matter-of-fact tone.
    â€œWell, my dear, what did you see?”
    Terry shook her head.
    â€œI can’t tell anyone—not till Tuesday. You see, it wouldn’t be fair, because I’ve told them all I wouldn’t.”
    â€œYou have told them all?”
    â€œYes—Emily, Norah, Mrs. Yorke, Fabian, and Mr. Applegarth.”
    â€œBut, my dear child, this is monstrous! It amounts to saying that one of these people took the picture.”
    â€œSomeone did.”
    â€œA burglar, my dear. The police said at once it was an outside job.”
    Terry shook her head.
    â€œNo.”
    Mr. Ridgefield leaned back in his corner. He said coldly,
    â€œI find all this a little fantastic—a little, shall we say, hysterical. If you really