By the time I got home, though, Burke was gone."
"And what time was that, please?"
"Seven-fifteen or so, seven-thirty."
"And what time had you left?"
"Maybe six-fifteenish."
"What time had Miss Spencer left?"
"I don't know."
"And between the time Miss Spencer left and the time you returned, who was here in the house with Mr. Dennings besides your danghter?"
"No one."
"No one? He left her alone?" She
nodded.
"No servants?"
"No, Willie and Karl were---"
'Who are they?"
Chris abruptly felt the earth shift under her feet. The nuzzling interview, she realized, was suddenly steely interrogation. "Well, Karl's right there." She motioned with her head, her glance fixed dully on the servant's back. Still polishing the oven... "And Willie's his wife," she resumed. "They're my housekeepers." Polishing... "They'd taken the afternoon off and when I got home, they weren't back yet. Willie..." Chris paused.
"Willie what?"
"Oh, well, nothing." She, shrugged as she tugged her gaze away from the manservant's brawny back. The oven was clean, she had noticed. Why was Karl still polishing?
She reached for a cigarette. Kinderman lit it.
"So then only your daughter would know when Dennings left the house."
"It was really an accident?"
"Oh, of course. It's routine, Miss MacNeil, its routine. Mr. Dennings wasn't robbed and he had no enemies, none that we know of, that is, in the District."
Chris darted a momentary glance to Karl but then shifted it quickly bade to Kinderman. Had he noticed? Apparently not. He was fingering the sculpture.
"It's got a name, this kind of bird; I can't think of it. something." He noticed Chris staring and looked vaguely embarrassed. "Forgive me, you're busy. Well, a minute and we're done. Now your daughter, she would know when Mr. Dennings left?"
"No, she wouldn't. She was heavily sedated."
"Ah, dear me, a shame, a shame." His droopy eyelids seeped concern. "It's serious?"
"Yes, I'm afraid it is."
"May I ask...?" he probed with a delicate gesture.
'We still don't know."
"Watch out for drafts," he cautioned firmly.
Chris looked blank.
"A draft in the winter when a house is hot is a magic carpet for bacteria. My mother used to say that. Maybe that's folk myth. Maybe." He shrugged. "But a myth, to speak plainly, to me is like a menu in a fancy French restaurant: glamorous, complicated camouflage for a fact you wouldn't otherwise swallow, like maybe lima beans," he said earnestly.
Chris relaxed. The shaggy dog padding fuddled through cornfields had returned.
"That's hers, that's her room"--- he was thumbing toward the ceiling--- "with that great big window looking out on these steps?" Chris nodded.
"Keep the window closed and she'll get better."
"Well, it's always closed and it's always shuttered" Chris said as he dipped a pudgy hand in the inside pocket of his jacket.
"She'll get better," he repeated sententiously. "Just remember, 'An ounce of prevention...' "
Chris drummed her fingertips on the tabletop again.
"You're busy. Well, we're finished. Just a note for the record--- routine--- we're all done." From the pocket of the jacket he'd extracted a crumpled mimeographed program of a highschool production of Cyrano de Bergerac and now groped in the pockets of his coat, where he netted a toothmarked yellow stub of a number 2 pencil, whose point had the look of having been sharpened with the blade of a scissors. He pressed the program flat on the table, brushing out the wrinkles. "Now just a name or two," he puffed. "That's Spencer with a c?" "Yes, c."
"A c," he repeated, writing the name in a margin of the program. "And the housekeepers? John and Willie...?"
"Karl and Willie Engstrom."
