"At dinner. Before the first seating. I put my book down on it — my library book, from Dayton — and went to the dining car. I came back at half past seven and sat here reading until the search was proposed. I did not touch the pillow. I did not lift the blanket."
"And the jewel case, ma'am — have you been inside Mrs. Vance's drawing room at any time today?"
"No. I have never been inside it."
"Have you ever seen this brooch before tonight?"
"No."
Pruett folded his arms. He was a big man, and the corridor was narrow, and his certainty filled what was left of the space. "Mrs. Ellison, the case was taken from the drawing room between eight and half past. Your berth is two doors down. The brooch from that case is found in your berth at twenty past nine. You tell me what I'm supposed to make of that."
"I cannot tell you what to make of it, Mr. Pruett. I can only tell you the truth. I did not take the case. I did not open it. I did not put the brooch in my berth."
"Everyone says that, ma'am."
The unfairness of it struck her like a slap — not the accusation itself, which was frightening enough, but the weary finality with which he dismissed her. He had decided. She could see it in the set of his shoulders, in the way he no longer looked at the brooch but at her, as if the facts were a formality he was obliged to walk through before getting to the part he had already reached.
"May I open my suitcase?" she asked. "You will find nothing in it that is not mine, but I would like you to see for yourself."
"We'll do the suitcase at Alder Creek, ma'am. In the presence of the sheriff."
The sheriff. The word landed in the corridor like a stone dropped in still water. Someone — the woman from the sections — drew in her breath. Martha felt the temperature of the car change, the way a room changes when everyone in it has silently agreed on something about you. The faces in the corridor were no longer curious. They were careful. They were keeping a distance that had nothing to do with the width of the passage.
"Please," she said, and was surprised at how steady her voice was. "Please write down what I have told you. Exactly as I said it. I boarded at Chicago yesterday with one suitcase, one handbag, and a library book. I have not entered Mrs. Vance's drawing room. I have never seen that brooch before tonight. Will you write that down, Mr. Dillard?"
Dillard wrote. The scratch of his pencil was the only sound for a moment, and then, from two berths down the corridor, came the sound of a young woman crying — not loudly, but with the helpless, hiccuping sobs of someone very young and very frightened. It was Dot Marchetti, the bride, and Martha could hear her husband's low voice, and then Pruett's, sharper: "That's enough of that, now. Everybody back to their berths. There's nothing more to see."
The crying stopped as if a hand had been laid over it. The corridor began to clear. Martha stood in the passage in her good traveling dress with her library book in her hand, and watched the doors close one by one, and understood that she was now something the car had to be protected from.
"Mrs. Ellison," Pruett said, when they were nearly alone — Dillard, Thomas, and the two men, and Mrs. Vance with her hand still at her throat, Howard hovering behind her. "Here's what's going to happen. We reach Alder Creek, the division point, at eleven-forty. You will leave the train there. You'll be in the custody of the night agent pending the sheriff. Your baggage will be examined. If there's nothing more to it than this brooch, the sheriff will sort it out and you'll be on your way."
"On my way where, Mr. Pruett? The next train west is twenty-four hours behind this one, and my sister is meeting me in Sacramento on Monday morning, and I have a teaching post to take up."
"That's for the sheriff to sort, ma'am."
"And if I refuse to leave the train?"
Pruett looked at her then, really looked at her, and what she saw in his face was not cruelty but something almost worse — the complete absence of doubt. "Ma'am, I've run this line thirty years. I've seen it before. The quiet ones, traveling alone, nothing to say for themselves. I'm sorry it's come to this, but the property has to be protected, and the passengers have to feel safe."
The quiet ones. Nothing to say for themselves. She had said everything there was to say, exactly, and it had availed her nothing at all.
"May I send a wire to my sister?" she asked. "In Sacramento. To tell her I will not be on Monday's train."
"That can wait for Alder Creek."