The Glass Slipper by Mignon G. Eberhart

forward. “Mrs Hatterick, your husband says, and you agree that you told him Julie Garder was confused and said she’d had a cocktail. What else did she say?”
    Rue swallowed hard, and Guy said nothing. Rue replied: “She was confused; she talked a little in a rambling way; nothing that made sense.”
    “What’d she talk of?”
    “She — she repeated my name and her own; she mumbled something abut a cocktail — pink; something about coming to see me — oh, there was nothing sensible and clear.”
    “Had you invited her to come to see you? I mean to come today specifically? Had you an engagement with her?”
    “No.”
    “You were on sufficiently friendly terms for her to call without an invitation?”
    “Yes, certainly.”
    “Did she come here often?”
    “No.”
    “Why not?”
    “Julie was busy.” He seemed to wait for her to amplify it, but something very quiet about Guy seemed to warn her to say no more than was necessary.
    “Then you and Miss Garder were still on good terms?”
    “Yes, certainly.”
    “Can you think of anything else she said?”
    Guy stirred. “She’s told you everything she knows. It’s been a shock for Mrs Hatterick. She’s doing well to let you question her at all. Later, if you find the girl’s been murdered, Mrs Hatterick can be questioned more at length.”
    The lieutenant looked at Guy, and Guy looked blandly back at him.
    “All right, Mrs Hatterick, I appreciate your willingness to be of help,” said Angel. “But there’s one or two points that I’d like to know more about right now. Whatever the autopsy proves, we’d like to know how she got in the house and how long she was here before she was announced. Your butler says he didn’t let her in. That he found her waiting in the drawing room, having evidently been admitted to the house some time previous. Who let her into the house and when?”
    “I don’t know. I didn’t know she was in the house. I heard nothing.”
    “You didn’t see her downstairs?”
    “No.”
    “You didn’t know she was in the house at all?”
    “No.”
    “Think carefully, Mrs Hatterick. Did she take anything while in your room — any capsule or pill?”
    “No. I’m sure of that,” said Rue and was instantly aware of Guy’s disapproval.
    He stirred and said: “That all, Lieutenant? Mrs Hatterick’s told you all she knows; of course if the girl does prove to have been murdered Mrs Hatterick’s willing to be questioned at length.”
    The lines in Angel’s thin long face deepened.
    “There’s one more question just now, Cole.” He leaned back a little in his chair, holding Rue’s gaze with his chill blue own; all at once the room held only silence and watchfulness. This was the real question; this was the sum, the crux of the whole inquiry.
    Guy shared Rue’s intuition, for he was suddenly as deadly still as a crouching animal. And the question came:
    “Tell me this, Mrs Hatterick. What did Julie Garder know of the death of the first Mrs Hatterick?”
    Guy got to his feet.
    “She doesn’t need to reply to that, Lieutenant. She doesn’t —”
    “Let the lady speak, Cole. How about it, Mrs Hatterick?”
    Guy said: “She doesn’t have to reply; but I will for her. The girl told her nothing, of course. She told her absolutely nothing of the facts of Crystal Hatterick’s death.”
    “Do you subscribe to that, Mrs Hatterick?”
    “I —”
    Guy answered again. “Look here. Angel; you’ve had your answer. Tell him, Rue, that I answered correctly. It may as well go on the record.”
    “Y-yes,” faltered Rue, confused by Guy’s demand; clinging to the letter of the truth.
    A telephone rang in the hall; Angel, disbelief in his cold eyes and another question on his tongue, stopped to listen. They heard the murmur of a voice from the telephone, which was in the recess near the dining room door. It was one of the detectives; he said yes, and no, and after a pause: “You don’t say!… Okay!”
    He appeared at the