Murder by an Aristocrat by Mignon G. Eberhart

Author:Mignon G. Eberhart
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781497655515
Publisher: MysteriousPress.com/Open Road

CHAPTER XII

After a moment I realized that I had known it all along; had known there was something faulty, something too pat, about the missing diamonds; had known there was something conspiratorial about that supposed theft of which so much had been made. But with my own eyes I had seen Adela open that safe and discover the loss of the jewels. Who, then, had arranged their disappearance at so apt a moment?

“Where? How do you know? Why didn’t you tell?”

It was difficult to persuade Florrie to talk.

“The only way to be safe in this house is to mind your own business,” she said.

It was only when I combined a delicate threat to tell Miss Thatcher with a sort of provisional promise to keep what she had told me a secret unless I found it absolutely necessary to tell it that she resumed her communicative mood.

The diamonds, she said, were in the tall jar of green bath salts in the bathroom adjoining Janice’s bedroom. She had seen them there the morning following Bayard’s murder. She had been cleaning the room rather hurriedly, and had picked up the jar to wipe the shelf under it and had caught the glimmer of one of the jewels which had somehow slipped through the concealing layers of crystals and next the glass. She had explored then and there, and while she didn’t remember exactly the entire collection of diamonds, she thought they were all there. Or most of them.

“It was a good place to hide them,” she said ruminatively. “The bath salts are sort of shiny; it was just the light catching one of the diamonds that made me look. But I didn’t say anything to anybody. I wanted to keep out of it. And I knew they were safe there because Miss Janice hates bath salts and never uses them. She says she just keeps the jar there for the color scheme. Did you ever see her bathroom, Miss Keate? She’s got water lilies painted all around the walls. And little green frogs. Heathenish, I say.”

“Are they still there?”

“Oh, sure. They’re painted.”

“The diamonds, I mean.”

She looked evasive.

“The last time I looked they were,” she said. “Say, Nurse, do you suppose Miss Janice managed so I got those tablets — veronal? Is that what you call them?”

“I don’t know how it happened, Florrie. Why did you think she might have — managed it?”

“She don’t like me,” said Florrie, still evasive. “She threatened me just yesterday.”

“Threatened you!”

“Well, she said I’d regret something I did. And I got those tablets right afterward and nearly died.”

I suppressed a smile at the thought of the salutary effect of Janice’s rebuke. Whatever Florrie’s conclusion regarding the veronal tablets came to be, I thought it highly unlikely she would ever do any more prowling among Janice’s things. Then another thought struck me:

“Florrie, think now and answer carefully. Did you leave that box of tablets anywhere in the house before you took them? Did you put it down on a table?

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