“Fine. Call them. I’ve got nothing to hide.”
“Are you implying that we have?”
“We’ll see. Why did you leave your husband?”
“That’s none of your business.”
“I’m making it my business, Mrs. Connor. I’m a detective investigating the murder of Ginnie Green. Did you leave Frank on account of Ginnie Green?”
“No. No! I wasn’t even aware–” Her hand went to her mouth again. She chewed on it some more.
“You weren’t aware that Frank was having an affair with Ginnie Green?”
“He wasn’t.”
“So you say. Others say different.”
“What others? Anita Brocco? You can’t believe anything that woman says. Why, her own father is a murderer, everybody in town knows that.”
“Your own husband may be another, Mrs. Connor. You might as well come clean with me.”
“But I have nothing to tell you.”
“You can tell me why you left him.”
“That is a private matter, between Frank and me. It has nothing to do with anybody but us.” She was calming down, setting her moral forces in a stubborn, defensive posture.
“There’s usually only the one reason.”
“I had my reasons. I said they were none of your business. I chose for reasons of my own to spend a month with my parents in Long Beach.”
“When did you come back?”
“This morning.”
“Why this morning?”
“Frank called me. He said he needed me.” She touched her thin breast absently, pathetically, as if perhaps she hadn’t been much needed in the past.
“Needed you for what?”
“As his wife,” she said. “He said there might be tr–” Her hand went to her mouth again. She said around it: “Trouble.”
“Did he name the kind of trouble?”
“No.”
“What time did he call you?”
“Very early, around seven o’clock.”
“That was more than an hour before I found Ginnie’s body.”
“He knew she was missing. He spent the whole night looking for her.”
“Why would he do that, Mrs. Connor?”
“She was his student. He was fond of her. Besides, he was more or less responsible for her.”
“Responsible for her death?”
“How dare you say a thing like that!”
“If he dared to do it, I can dare to say it.”
“He didn’t!” she cried. “Frank is a good man. He may have his faults, but he wouldn’t kill anyone. I know him.”
“What are his faults?”
“We won’t discuss them.”
“Then may I have a look in your garage?”
“What for? What are you looking for?”
“I’ll know when I find it.” I turned toward the garage door.
“You mustn’t go in there,” she said intensely. “Not without Frank’s permission.”
“Wake him up and we’ll get his permission.”
“I will not. He got no sleep last night.”
“Then I’ll just have a look without his permission.”
“I’ll kill you if you go in there.”
She picked up the garden shears and brandished them at me – a sick-looking lioness defending her overgrown cub. The cub himself opened the front door of the cottage. He slouched in the doorway groggily, naked except for white shorts.
“What goes on, Stella?”
“This man has been making the most horrible accusations.”
His blurred glance wavered between us and focused on her. “What did he say?”
“I won’t repeat it.”
“I will, Mr. Connor. I think you were Ginnie Green’s lover, if that’s the word. I think she followed you to this house last night, around midnight. I think she left it with a rope around her neck.”
Connor’s head jerked. He started to make a move in my direction. Something inhibited it, like an invisible leash. His body slanted toward me, static, all the muscles taut. It resembled an anatomy specimen with the skin off. Even his face seemed mostly bone and teeth.
I hoped he’d swing on me and let me hit him. He didn’t. Stella Connor dropped the garden shears. They made a noise like the dull clank of doom.
“Aren’t you going to deny it, Frank?”
“I didn’t kill her. I swear I didn’t. I admit that we – that we were together last night, Ginnie and I.”
“Ginnie and I?” the woman repeated incredulously.
His head hung down. “I’m sorry, Stella. I didn’t want to hurt you more than I have already. But it has to come out. I took up with the girl after you left. I was lonely and feeling sorry for myself. Ginnie kept hanging around. One night I drank too much and let it happen. It happened more than once. I was so flattered that a pretty young girl–”
“You fool!” she said in a deep, harsh voice.
“Yes, I’m a moral fool. That’s no surprise to you, is it?”
“I thought you respected your pupils, at least. You mean to say you brought her into our own house, into our own bed?”
“You’d left. It wasn’t ours any more. Besides, she came of her own accord. She wanted to come. She loved me.”
She said with grinding contempt: “You poor, groveling ninny. And to think you had the gall to ask me to come back here, to make you look respectable.”
I cut in between them. “Was she here last night, Connor?”
“She was here. I didn’t invite her. I wanted her to come, but I dreaded it, too. I knew that I was taking an awful chance. I drank quite a bit to numb my conscience–”
“What conscience?” Stella Connor said.
“I have a conscience,” he said without looking at her. “You don’t know the hell I’ve been going through. After she came, after it happened last night, I drank myself unconscious.”
“Do you mean after you killed her?” I said.
“I didn’t kill her. When I passed out, she was perfectly all right. She was sitting up drinking a cup of instant coffee. The next thing I knew, hours later, her father was on the telephone and she was gone.”
“Are you trying to pull the old blackout alibi? You’ll have to do better than that.”
“I can’t. It’s the truth.”
“Let me into your garage.”
He seemed almost glad to be given an order, a chance for some activity. The garage wasn’t locked. He raised the overhead door and let the daylight into the interior. It smelled of paint. There were empty cans of marine paint on a bench beside the sailboat. Its hull gleamed virgin white.
“I painted my flattie last week,” he said inconsequentially.
“You do a lot of sailing?”
“I used to. Not much lately.”
“No,” his wife said from the doorway. “Frank changed his hobby to women. Wine and women.”
“Lay off, eh?” His voice was pleading.
She looked at him from a great and stony silence.
I walked around the boat, examining the cordage. The starboard jib line had been sheared off short. Comparing it with the port line, I found that the missing piece was approximately a yard long. That was the length of the piece of white rope that I was interested in.
“Hey!” Connor grabbed the end of the cut line. He fingered it as if it was a wound in his own flesh. “Who’s been messing with my lines? Did you cut it, Stella?”
“I never go near your blessed boat,” she said.
“I can tell you where the rest of that line is, Connor. A line of similar length and color and thickness was wrapped around Ginnie Green’s neck when I found her.”
“Surely you don’t believe I put it there?”
I tried to, but I couldn’t. Small-boat sailers don’t cut their jib lines, even when they’re contemplating murder. And while Connor was clearly no genius, he was smart enough to have known that the line could easily be traced to him. Perhaps someone else had been equally smart.