“Any chance that it wasn’t arsenic that killed her?”
“Not unless Jordan’s a bum doctor.”
A policewoman came in with Peggy Carroll.
The blonde girl was tired. Her eyelids, mouth corners and body drooped, and when I pushed a chair out toward her she sagged down in it.
O’Gar ducked his grizzled bullet head at me.
“Now, Peggy,” I said, “tell us where you fit into this mess.”
“I don’t fit into it.” She didn’t look up. Her voice was tired. “Joe dragged me into it. He told you.”
“You his girl?”
“If you want to call it that,” she admitted.
“You jealous?”
“What,” she asked, looking up at me, her face puzzled, “has that got to do with it?”
“Sue Hambleton was getting ready to go away with him when she was murdered.”
The girl sat up straight in the chair and said deliberately:
“I swear to God I didn’t know she was murdered.”
“But you did know she was dead,” I said positively.
“I didn’t,” she replied just as positively.
I nudged O’Gar with my elbow. He pushed his undershot jaw at her and barked: