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“you were over there. You had tea with her, I suppose. They were going away together tonight, and you dropped in for a sociable farewell visit. Or maybe to help her pack.”
    And even the one called Flood—I could see by the way he looked at me he didn’t take it seriously either—just felt sorry for me. He tried to let me down as gently as he could. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Murray,” he said, “that wouldn’t help much even if it were so. You see, she—it happened between one and two in the afternoon. We have experts who can give us the time on these things. And Murray here”—you could tell by the tightening up when he pronounced the name and glanced aside at him his feeling sorry ended with me, didn’t extend to Kirk—“Murray here may have been back at his office by the time you phoned around six, but he admits that he was over there at the Mercer place just around that very time. In fact, he was seen leaving the building at a quarter of two, so there’s no virtue in his either admitting or denying it.”
    Kirk’s breath said, soft beside my ear in rueful tenderness, “Don’t say that any more, about you going there. Please, for me, won’t you? Thanks just the same.” I saw that he didn’t believe me himself, now that he’d thought twice about it, any more than the other two did. Masculine minds seem to run in the same groove in certain situations.
    â€œI couldn’t get in; she didn’t answer the bell,” he went on. “So I waited a minute or two, and then I went away again.” But this was to them, over the top of my head, not to me. He was ashamed to address me directly about it because of the implication.
    Brennan suddenly raised his own hand. To show me Kirk’s hand, by bringing it up automatically like that along with his. There were a number of varying red streaks on the back of it.
    â€œHer cat did that,” Kirk said, continuing to address them. “I’ve told you where those came from over and over.”
    Brennan said to Flood: “She wouldn’t let him in, but her cat raked his hand.”
    â€œIt was outside in the hall; it had gotten out in some way. When I tried to grab it, it slashed at me and ran away. It acted like something had frightened it. But it was always running out like that, beating it up to the roof and places, so I let it go——”
    â€œGood alibi, that cat,” Brennan said. He let their hands drop again. “But not good enough. Come on.” He gave his wrist a directional jerk that tautened the links. Kirk had to turn in answer to it. It did something to me, to see him turn in involuntary obedience like that. The way a dog does on a leash.
    I tried to draw his face down to mine, press it to me, but his cheek slipped away and was gone; I couldn’t hold it.
    They were taking him out the door. “Ah, wait,” I pleaded. “Won’t he need something? Let me give him something to take with him.”
    I ran into the bedroom, looked around blindly, snatched up something at random from underneath one of the bed pillows. I think it was a pair of striped pajamas; I’m not sure.
    I know, I know; it was a silly thing to do, but I’d never had my husband taken away from me for murder before; I hadn’t learned the proper decorum.
    I ran back with them, and when I got there the door was standing open and the hallway beyond was empty. They hadn’t waited; they were gone.
    I stood there in the open doorway, and the rolled-up pajamas dropped disconsolately to the floor at my feet and lay there.

3
    ANNOUNCEMENT OF WIDOWHOOD
    I COULDN ’ T BELIEVE IT WAS ALL OVER AND DONE WITH already as I sat there in Benedict’s office waiting for him to come back. The long dragging months seemed to have flashed by like minutes. I had a childish notion that they’d left something out, that they’d rushed things through more