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“How do you intend to do it?”

“I’m not sure. I’ll have to investivate and see what I can discover. As a beginning, I’ve been trying to find that sneaky McBride, but he’s been avoiding me.”

“Is there anything in particular that I can do to help?”

“Not immediately. There may be something later, however, and it’s reassuring to know that you’re available.”

“Don’t mention it. In the meantime, I’ll keep things going here at the office. It’s my professional opinion that Gid’s practice will benefit from all this. He will get a certain amount of publicity, which is always good in the end, and when he is proved innocent, thanks to you, everyone will eventually forget how it really was and think that it was due to his own cleverness as a lawyer.”

“That’s quite encouraging, T must say. Would you like to go somewhere and have a drink or something?”

“I’d like to, but I don’t think I’d better. I’m scheduled for a scrimmage with a certain engineer this evening, and I need to keep a clear head.”

“In that case, I’ll run along. Good-by for the present.”

“Good-by,” Millie said. “Let me know the instant I’m needed.”

Sid went downstairs and stood still for a moment to consider her immediate future. She thought she might as well try once more to catch Cotton McBride, and so she went over to the police department in City Hall, and Cotton was there, and she caught him.

“Here you are at last,” Sid said. “Where the devil have you been?”

“I’ve been busy,” Cotton said.

“That’s certainly so. You’ve been busy making mistakes and the worst kind of fool of yourself. Why have you put Gid in jail without a word of warning to me or anyone else?”

“Because he’s a murder suspect.”

“And why, precisely, is he a murder suspect?”

“Because he was in Dreamer’s Park about the time Beth Thatcher was murdered there.”

“What time was that?”

“He said he left home about nine thirty, and he walked to the park, so it must have been around ten o’clock.”

“Truly? It’s incredible how you can make such clever deductions. I wasn’t asking what time Gid was in the park, however. I was asking what time Beth Thatcher was murdered.”

Cotton, who had his mouth open in position for his next remark, stood looking at her for a few seconds in silence, his mouth still open in position, and then he sat down slowly in his chair and took a firm grip on its arms. Sid, uninvited, sat down in a chair across from him.

“That’s not exactly known, of course,” Cotton said.

“How interesting! What time, inexactly, would you say she was killed?”

“Damn it, it’s impossible to do more than make a scientific estimate. The coroner says it was between seven and eleven.”

“It must be wonderful to be able to make scientific estimates, and I don’t see how that coroner manages to do it. He isn’t even a doctor, let alone a scientist.”

“The post-mortem was done by a doctor.”

“Naturally. A general practitioner who would have trouble diagnosing rigor mortis itself, without regard for the time when it started.”

“Now, I’ll tell you something, Mrs. Jones. You’re always going around making critical remarks about the police and the medical profession, and I want to warn you that you’d better stop. It’s not right.”

“Isn’t it? I’d like to point out that being critical of a doctor and a policeman and a coroner is not quite so serious a matter as putting someone in jail for the silliest of reasons.”

“Gid was in the park during the estimated time of death. He’s admitted that he was, and that’s reason enough to hold him.”

“I believe you said the estimated time of death is four hours. Seven to eleven. How many other people were in the park in that time?”

“How would I know? We didn’t have the park under surveillance.”

“That’s a very significant admission, don’t you think?”

“I’m not making any admissions or anything else. The point is, Gid’s the only one we know was in the park, and he went there specifically to meet the victim, and he had a reason to hold a grudge against her.”

“Because she married someone else? That was a favor. If she hadn’t. Gid would never have had the chance to marry me.”

“Well, it’s not my place to argue the relative merits of two women.”

“That’s correct. I’m glad to know that you know what your place isn’t, even if you don’t always seem to know just what it is.”

Cotton took an even firmer grip on the arms of his chair, his knuckles turning white, and breathed deeply several times.

“There’s nothing to be gained from arguing,” he said finally.

“I agree,” Sid said. “It would be much more profitable to discuss the murder case. We have already established, for example, that you don’t really know when the victim died, or who was with her when she did. Now I would like to know what makes you so sure you know where she died.”

“Damn it, she died in Dreamer’s Park.”

“Did someone actually see her killed there?”

“No, but that’s where she was found, and no one in his right mind would lug a dead body around town when it would be safer and easier to leave it where it became dead. Besides, Beth Thatcher called Gid and arranged to meet him in the park. That’s where she went and where she was killed.”

“It must be a great comfort to have a dogmatic mind. As for me. I’m never so sure about things. Was the weapon that killed her left in the wound?”

“It was not. We haven’t found it yet. It’ll be necessary, by the way, to search your house and yard.”

“We can settle that when the time comes. What I want to know now is how much blood there was.”

“Not much. The wound was just a sort of puncture, made by a thin blade. The doc says it wasn’t exactly a blade, as a matter of fact. It was more spikelike.”

“But the paper and everyone have constantly referred to it as a blade.”

“It was just something that got said and repeated. What’s the difference?”

“I’m of the opinion that there’s considerable difference between a blade and something spikelike. It’s obvious that you’ve been sloppy or deceptive in numerous instances. I consider it odd that there wasn’t more blood, although I’ll concede that something spikelike would probably cause less bleeding than a blade.”

“Thanks so much. The truth is, there wasn’t even enough bleeding to wash away all the dirt.”

“Dirt? Did you say dirt?”

“That’s what I said. There must have been some dirt on the weapon, because there was some at the edge of the wound, and a little inside.”

“Well, this is getting odder and more interesting all the time, and it seems to me that you’ve given far too little attention to details that deserve more.” Sid stood up and walked away a couple of steps and looked back over her shoulder at Cotton. “By the way,” she said, “if you actually plan to waste time searching our yard and house, be sure you bring a warrant with you when you come to do it.”

“I know,” Cotton said sourly. “Otherwise, you’ll shoot me as a trespasser.”

The evening Record carried a startling account of how Gideon Jones, prominent young local attorney, had been detained by authorities on suspicion of murdering Beth Webb Thatcher, formerly the wife of Wilson Thatcher, prominent business executive. Sid read the account carefully from beginning to the end, and although the grounds for suspecting Gideon Jones were made perfectly clear in short words that could be understood even on the fringes of literacy, there was not the slightest suggestion that Mr. and Mrs. Wilson Thatcher were legally Wilson Thatcher and Thelma Bleeker, or that they had been blackmailed as a result by the legal Mrs. Wilson Thatcher, who was dead from having been killed, and that they might, therefore, quite reasonably be considered suspicious themselves. There was clearly a minor conspiracy to spare the Thatchers public embarrassment unless it became absolutely unavoidable, and it was Sid’s indignant opinion that the Thatchers were not one bit more worthy of being spared than the Joneses, who had not been spared at all.