Mrs. Willsson wasn’t anxious to see us, but people usually see the chief of police if he insists. This one did. We were taken upstairs to where Donald Willsson’s widow sat in the library. She was in black. Her blue eyes had frost in them.
Noonan and I took turns mumbling condolences and then he began:
“We just wanted to ask you a couple of questions. For instance, like where’d you go last night?”
She looked disagreeably at me, then back to the chief, frowned, and spoke haughtily:
“May I ask why I am being questioned in this manner?”
I wondered how many times I had heard that question, word for word and tone for tone, while the chief, disregarding it, went on amiably:
“And then there was something about one of your shoes being stained. The right one, or maybe the left. Anyways it was one or the other.”
A muscle began twitching in her upper lip.
“Was that all?” the chief asked me. Before I could answer he made a clucking noise with his tongue and turned his genial face to the woman again. “I almost forgot. There was a matter of how you knew your husband wouldn’t be home.”
She got up, unsteadily, holding the back of her chair with one white hand.
“I’m sure you’ll excuse—”
“ ’S all right.” The chief made a bighearted gesture with one beefy paw. “We don’t want to bother you. Just where you went, and about the shoe,