“Will you tell me exactly why you are dissatisfied with what the sheriff is doing, Miss Shan?”
“In the first place, I am not sure they are competent. The ones I saw certainly did not impress me with their brilliance.”
“And in the second place?”
“Really,” she asked coldly, “is it necessary to go into all my mental processes?”
“It is.”
She looked at the Old Man, who smiled at her with his polite, meaningless smile—a mask through which you can read nothing.
For a moment she hung fire. Then: “I don’t think they are looking in very likely places. They seem to spend the greater part of their time in the vicinity of the house. It is absurd to think the murderers are going to return.”
I turned that over in my mind.
“Miss Shan,” I asked, “don’t you think they suspect you?”
Her dark eyes burned through her glasses at me and, if possible, she made herself more rigidly straight in her chair.
“Preposterous!”
“That isn’t the point,” I insisted. “Do they?”
“I am not able to penetrate the police mind,” she came back. “Do you ?”
“I don’t know anything about this job but what I’ve read and what you’ve just told me. I need more foundation than that to suspect