Welcome, cottonstar.
Yes your logic for cleaning it up makes sense. One can only read their statements and make an attempt to understand why they claim this or that, and where the truth might lie. (I’m skeptical of so many of their statements.)
OTOH, it could have also been broken by JR that early morning, if he was trying to hint that an Intruder might have entered through the window which had never been repaired. From all analyses of his explanations, JR was the ‘Master of Plan B.’ JR might have figured that the housekeeper would be interviewed, and the accusation that it was an ‘inside job’ by someone with a key (like LHP) would fall apart. Then they could rely on the window as an entry. He took FW to the window to show him this broken window and was planting the seeds of a ‘mystery’ with it.
Schiller does reference the window in PMPT.
-When they told Linda that John Ramsey had said he’d broken the basement widow to enter his home, she found it odd. She said that Ramsey always came in through the garage door, which he opened with a remote-control device, then through a door to the house that was never locked except when Nedra was home alone at night with her grandchildren.
The gardener was also asked about the window.
-Scott said he didn’t remember that the window was broken. He’d only been in the basement to fix the sprinkler clock. He didn’t know there was a wine cellar, much less where it was. He did recall a broken window at the front of the house, but it was for the electrical cord for the Christmas lights and certainly not big enough for someone to crawl through—something like 2 inches square.
From Schiller's references, it doesn't sound like the housekeeper or gardener remember seeing a broken window in the basement. If, as Patsy elaborated, LHP was down there helping Patsy clean it up, surely LHP would have remembered.
