I lit a Fatima and breathed smoke in silence for a while, and the girl sat placidly watching me.
Here I had two women—neither normal. Mrs. Gilmore was hysterical, abnormally nervous. This girl was dull, subnormal. One was the dead man’s wife; the other his mistress; and each with reason for believing she had been thrown down for the other. Liars, both; and both finally confessing that they had been near the scene of the crime at the time of the crime, though neither admitted seeing the other. Both, by their own accounts, had been at that time even further from normal than usual— Mrs. Gilmore filled with jealousy; Cara Kenbrook half-drunk.
What was the answer? Either could have killed Gilmore; but hardly both—unless they had formed some sort of crazy partnership, and in that event—
Suddenly all the facts I had gathered—true and false—clicked together in my head. I had the answer—the one simple, satisfying answer!
I grinned at the girl, and set about filling in the gaps in my solution.
“Who is Stan?” I asked.
“Stanley Tennant—he has something to do with the city.”
Stanley Tennant. I knew him by reputation, a—
A key rattled in the hall door.
The hall door opened and closed, and a man’s footsteps came toward the open doorway of the room in which we were. A tall, broad-shouldered