“What a strange thing to use!”
“Not really. It has advantages. It’s easily acquired and easily taken. No pain, no sickness, no mess. You go into a coma, and that’s it. Cardiac or respiratory failure. There are lots worse ways to die.”
Nancy shuddered nevertheless. “Anyhow, this settles everything, doesn’t it?”
“It would seem so. Murder and suicide.”
“Then why have you come back?” She looked at him shrewdly, head cocked. “If everything’s settled, I mean.”
“There are odds and ends to gather up. Probably unimportant, but you never know. Besides, I want to ask you to do something for me.”
“Oh?”
“Mr. Connor’s body is at the mortician’s. The law requires an official identification. Will you identify him?”
“Oh, dear.”
“I shouldn’t have asked. One of the men in the neighborhood will do. Is your husband home?”
“No, David left for the school long ago. And Jack’s at his office, I should think, and Stanley’s at his store. I’ll go with you, Lieutenant. I... I don’t mind.”
“Thanks. I’ll drive you there and bring you back.”
“I’ll get into a dress if you’ll wait. Will you come in?”
“I’ll wait here, thank you. No hurry.”
Nancy returned in a simple blue dress that won Masters’s admiration. He wondered how she had achieved such casual smartness in so little time with so few props. It was largely, he supposed, the result of basic assets, which were sound, very sound. All the way downtown he was keenly conscious of the little woman beside him in the police car, and he kept his eyes strictly on the road as a matter of discipline. What scent was she wearing? It was faint and elusive; and when he parked behind the mortician’s, having approached through the alley, he still had not identified it.
Not so with the scent inside the building. It was the odor of death embalmed, and it seemed to seep from the very plaster and wood and old brick. Or perhaps it was only the amalgam of all the odors that accumulate where the dead are prepared for eternity. They were admitted by a man wearing a kind of apron; and he directed them to a small room where Larry Connor lay waiting patiently to be embalmed after his autopsy. Not, Masters reflected, that an autopsy in this case could reveal much of anything. Evidence of chloral hydrate, always difficult to detect, had surely dissipated...
He was aware all at once that Nancy had stopped walking, and he turned back to her. She was standing quite still, eyes closed and saucy face drained of color. He had an exorbitant feeling of alarm, certain that she was going to faint. But before he could reach her, she opened her eyes and took a deep breath.
“Are you all right, Mrs. Howell?” he asked.
“Yes. I got a little dizzy for a moment, that’s all.”
“Are you sure you want to do this?”
“I don’t want to, but I will.”
And it was, after all, not so bad. Larry was so still and remote, so withdrawn from all trouble whatsoever — and so essentially un-Larry-like, when it came to that — that it was impossible to feel more than wonder that he had come by his own wish to where he was. His sad thin face had fallen into lines of disdain that expressed his utter indifference to all that had happened to him or might happen hereafter. Was it only the night before last, Nancy thought, that she had sat with him on a bench and listened to him talking out of a keg? His voice returned to her in a whisper, come from an incredible distance and a long time past. And where was Lila? Was Lila also in this place of deathly sweetness? Nancy turned and walked away, Masters following. In the alley she stopped by the car, leaning against it for a moment; and he was aware of a desire to stroke her head, to hold her hand — to give her, by some human gesture, what comfort he could.
Masters was, in fact, feeling guilty for having subjected her to the ordeal. The truth was that he had been inexplicably reluctant to leave her, after their conversation on her terrace, and he had hit on this grim chore as a way of retaining her company. From the beginning of this affair, he had sensed that her lively and innocent curiosity was the product of a good brain, however scattered; and what he wanted to do, he now saw with considerable surprise, was to test on her the meager substance on which his uncertainty was founded.
“I wonder,” he said, “if you would have a cup of coffee with me.”
“I’d rather go home, I think.”
“I’d appreciate it, Mrs. Howell. I’d like to talk to you.”
“About what?”
“A couple of things that bother me. What do you say?”
“I’ll give you a cup of coffee at my house, Lieutenant. Will that do?”
“If it wouldn’t be too much trouble...”
So they went back and sat at the table in Nancy’s kitchen and had the coffee that was left from breakfast. She watched him from across the table, her curiosity on leash.
“You may think I’m crazy,” Masters began.
“Why?”
“Because, Mrs. Howell, this thing keeps looking one way, and I keep thinking it might have been another way entirely.”
“What other way?”
“It looks like murder and suicide. I keep thinking it might have been murder and murder-made-to-look-like-suicide. By a third party.”
Nancy was startled. “Whatever gave you such an idea?”
“As I said, a couple of things. A key that may or may not be missing... You finding the air-conditioner in the Connor house turned off. Why? Dr. Richmond thinks someone meant to open the windows. I’m not satisfied with that.”
“But why else would it have been turned off?”
“What if someone had wanted to confuse the times of death?”
“I don’t think I understand, Lieutenant,” said Nancy, fascinated.
“In fixing the time of death with a reasonable degree of accuracy,” explained Masters, “a number of factors have to be taken into account — the climate, the weather, the temperature, the barometric pressure, peculiar local conditions and so on. Bodies deteriorate much faster in high temperatures than in low, for example. Of course, where air-conditioners are involved the medical examiner takes them into account also in his figuring.”
“You mean,” breathed Nancy, “suppose somebody manipulated the air-conditioning factor in this case?”
Masters could only admire her quickness of mind. “Exactly. Let’s assume a third principal in this affair, Mrs. Howell — and let’s call him Murderer. Murderer wants to kill Lila Connor — let’s not bother just now with why. He knows the Connors’ domestic history; he knows they had a bitter quarrel Saturday night. He sees that Larry Connor is a natural set-up to be tagged for the killing if Lila Connor is murdered. Obviously, if he can frame Larry for Lila’s murder, it’s safer if Connor also dies and therefore can’t defend himself. So Murderer says to himself: This has to look like a murder and suicide — the husband killing the wife and then taking his own life...”
“Are you seriously suggesting that Larry was killed simply to cover up Lila’s murder?”
“I’m just thinking out loud,” said Masters with a smile. “Now. Circumstances — maybe the pressure of time, or events that can’t be avoided — make it necessary for Murderer to kill Lila and Larry Connor close enough together so that it would be hard, if not impossible, to establish with any accuracy in which order the murders took place. But the essence of Murderer’s plot is that Lila’s death be medically recognized and accepted as having occurred prior to her husband’s. That’s where the air-conditioning manipulation comes in.”
“I see,” said Nancy, frowning in concentration. “Or do I? Was the air-conditioner running in Larry’s office when you found him?”
“No, it was off. The place was stuffy and hot.”