Yellow Room by Mary Roberts Rinehart

Newport. I didn’t come into this room until Freda reported it to me. And I didn’t even need to tell you about it. I did. Isn’t that enough?”
    “Somebody got those clothes,” he said doggedly.
    Sheer indignation brought her to her feet.
    “Why don’t you go down and look in the furnace?” she said indignantly. “That’s where I would burn them, isn’t it? Go on down, all of you, sift the ashes—that’s what you do, isn’t it? And I hope you get good and dirty!”
    “Don’t you worry about me getting dirty,” Floyd said grimly, and after locking the door led the way downstairs again.
    In the library once more the state trooper placed the hat beside the package on the table, and Floyd went over what he had so far discovered. The girl had got off the bus at half past six or thereabouts on Friday morning, June the sixteenth. She had asked the driver for the drugstore, but he had told her it would not be open yet. After that nobody saw her in the town that early morning until at seven-thirty or so Mr. Allison, who owned the local Five-&-Ten, saw a girl in a white hat, a fur jacket and a black dress sitting in a public park near the bandstand. When he looked again, she was gone.
    After that the trail picked up somewhat. She had had a cup of coffee at Sam’s hamburger stand when it opened at eight, and asked for a telephone book. Apparently she did not find what she wanted, and Sam had told her half the telephones in town had been taken out. She had not seemed worried, however. She had merely said a walk would do her good, and asked the direction of Shore Drive, which led to Crestview.
    Sam had said she was pretty, about twenty-five or so, and very well dressed. What he actually said, Carol learned later, was that she “looked like some of the summer crowd,” and that he didn’t think she would walk far “in them spike-heeled shoes she wore.”
    None of the taxi men in town had seen her. Apparently she had walked to her destination, whatever that was.
    Dane did not interrupt. He listened intently, but when the district attorney made a gesture toward the package he made a protest.
    “Is that necessary?” he asked. “Miss Spencer has had a bad day. She looks exhausted.”
    “We have to do what we can, major. There may be something here she will recognize.”
    It was Floyd who opened the bundle, carefully saving the string, his big fingers working at the knots. Opened and spread out on the table was what was left of the short fur jacket, badly burned, the scorched pair of bedroom slippers, and a few scraps of cloth, one of them red silk or rayon. Over all was the odor of burned fur, and Dane quickly lit a cigarette and gave it to Carol.
    It helped somewhat. She was able to face the table, even to go to it Floyd was holding up the scrap of red material and once more all the faces were turned to her.
    “What’s this, Miss Spencer?” Floyd asked.
    “I wouldn’t know. It looks—it might be part of a kimono or a dressing gown. It wouldn’t be a slip.”
    “That’s what my wife says.” He looked around the room. “So what? So she was undressed. She wasn’t expecting any trouble. She undressed and went to bed in that room upstairs, and what happened to her happened to her in this house.”
    Dane spoke for the first time.
    “That doesn’t follow,” he said. “She might have gone outside, for some purpose.”
    “What difference does it make?” said Floyd belligerently. “She’s dead, isn’t she?”
    “It might change things somewhat.” Dane picked up one of the slippers and shook it. A pine needle slipped out and lay on the desk, and Floyd flushed angrily. “Whether she was killed in this house or not,” Dane said casually, “she was outside that night. What does Mrs. Norton say?”
    “That’s my business,” Floyd said gruffly, and proceeded to tie up the package again, crushing the white hat in with the rest and fastening it carefully with the string he had saved. They left after that,