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room; now it seemed garish and full of a grisly contrast. Crystal’s room; Crystal’s white hands touching and selecting those soft fabrics; and now the two men in the room had come, businesslike, to investigate Crystal’s murder.
    Murder. The word caught at her again, squeezed her heart, sickened her.
    “What do you want to ask me?” she said.
    “I expect Doctor Crittenden has told you why we are here,” said Miller, while the little Funk watched with frightened, nervous eyes under thick black eyebrows that had a worried-looking slant. Miller waited for her answer.
    Andy said: “I told her something of it, yes. That you had got the idea from a series of mischievous letters saying that the former Mrs Hatterick’s death ought to be investigated.”
    “Yes. Now if you’ll be good enough to answer my questions yourself, Mrs Hatterick. You are Doctor Hatterick’s second wife?”
    “Yes.”
    “You were married two months ago in the vestry of the Third Presbyterian Church —”
    “Yes.”
    “Before your marriage you were a nurse?”
    “Yes,” said Rue again and named the hospital. Her hands were shaking. She stripped off her gloves slowly, trying to control her trembling fingers.
    “Exactly. In fact you were the nurse who took care of the first Mrs Hatterick at the time of her fatal illness?”
    “Yes. That is, I was the night nurse; there was also a day nurse.”
    “Miss Juliet Garder. Yes. We’ve already talked to her.”
    Talked to Julie. What had they said? What had Julie said? What had Julie thought?
    “She says on the night Mrs Hatterick died she left the house at seven. She went off duty, then, she said, and you arrived at that time.”
    “That is right.”
    “She says that at that time Mrs Hatterick seemed much better; she had been improving for some days and was definitely better.”
    It wasn’t a question, and Rue waited.
    The little man in the shadow of the window curtain discovered a heavy gold tassel which seemed greatly to interest and astonish him; he touched it with thin, not too clean hands, like little claws. Miller went on: “But at eleven o’clock that night Mrs Hatterick died. Is that true, Mrs Hatterick?”
    He took, thought Rue, extra pains to roll Mrs Hatterick repeatedly over his tongue, as if the name alone had some significance. As, perhaps, to him it did.
    She didn’t dare think of that significance. She said:
    “Yes, that’s true. She fell into a coma shortly after I came on duty; I thought it was a natural sleep until I went to her about ten, I think it must have been, to take her pulse.”
    “Why did you do that?”
    “Take her pulse, you mean? I took it several times each night and made the entry on my chart; as a rule I did it, if she was asleep, without waking her.”
    “Chart. Do you have those charts?”
    Rue thought back.
    “I don’t know. In the hospital your charts are kept on file, but when on private duty I’ve never made it a custom to keep my charts. Someone may have kept them; I don’t know.”
    “You mean someone in the household? A maid?”
    “Perhaps. Perhaps Doctor Hatterick has them.”
    “Doctor Crittenden was the attending physician. Do you happen to have the charts, Doctor Crittenden?”
    “No. I looked at them every day when I came to see — to see my patient.
    The little Funk relinquished the gold tassel. Miller said: “Well, well — that will come later. Now don’t misunderstand me, Mrs Hatterick; I don’t want to exceed my duty; none of us want to do that; but as much for your protection and Doctor Hatterick’s protection as anyone’s, it is our duty to prove that there’s no truth in these letters. If there’s any rumors going about it’s our duty to prove those rumors wrong and slanderous. We feel you’ll want to help us do that.”
    “Yes, certainly.”
    “Therefore we feel you’ll do everything in your power to help us.”
    “Yes.”
    “Then you’ll forgive me if my questions seem to — seem to touch on your