and how you knew he wasn’t coming back. And, come to think of it, there’s another—What Thaler wanted here this morning.”
Mrs. Willsson sat down again, very rigidly. The chief looked at her. A smile that tried to be tender made funny lines and humps in his fat face. After a little while her shoulders began to relax, her chin went lower, a curve came in her back.
I put a chair facing her and sat on it.
“You’ll have to tell us, Mrs. Willsson,” I said, making it as sympathetic as I could. “These things have got to be explained.”
“Do you think I have anything to hide?” she asked defiantly, sitting up straight and stiff again, turning each word out very precisely, except that the s ’s were a bit slurred. “I did go out. The stain was blood. I knew my husband was dead. Thaler came to see me about my husband’s death. Are your questions answered now?”
“We knew all that,” I said. “We’re asking you to explain them.”
She stood up again, said angrily:
“I dislike your manner. I refuse to submit to—”
Noonan said:
“That’s perfectly all right, Mrs. Willsson, only we’ll have to ask you to go down to the Hall with us.”
She turned her back to him, took a deep breath and threw words at me:
“While we were waiting here for Donald I had a telephone call. It was a man who wouldn’t give his name. He said Donald had gone to the home of a woman named Dinah Brand with a check for five thousand dollars.