reaction on his part that forced from his lips the word “Later.” The cobwebs reappeared. She left the room.
Lieutenant Valcour drew a chair close to the chaise longue upon which Mrs. Endicott was nervously lying. Flung across her knees was a robe of China silk, a black river bearing on its surface huge flowers done in silver and slashed at its fringes with the jade chiffon of her dress. He launched his campaign by first swinging, wordily, well wide of its ultimate objective. His tone, from a deliberate casual friendliness, was an anodyne to possible reservations, or fears.
“It is the tragedy of a detective’s life,” he said pleasantly, “that the sudden slender contact he has with a case affords such a useless background for human behaviour. You can see what I mean, Mrs. Endicott. Were I you, or some intimate friend either of yourself or of your husband, I would already be in possession of the countless little threads that have woven the pattern of Mr. Endicott’s life for the past five or ten years. You’ll forgive me for outraging oratory? It’s a nasty habit I’ve contracted in later years whenever dealing with the abstract. I’m not making a speech, really. What I’m trying to express is that in that background, that pattern of Mr. Endicott’s life, one thread or series of interrelated threads would stand out pretty plainly as the reason why someone should wish to kill him.”
“I,” said Mrs. Endicott, “have several times wished to kill him.”
Lieutenant Valcour nodded. “There is nothing left for me but the trite things to say about marriage. And trite things, after all, are the true things, don’t you think?”
“If they’re just discovered. I mean by that, that to the person just discovering their deadly aptness they’re true. Rather terribly so sometimes.”
“But the aptness wears off with usage?”