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where was he? What…? George, you don’t think… you can’t…” She took a quick step toward me and grabbed my arm. “Why in heaven’s name didn’t you let me know earlier? I told him to go home. I made him promise. I never for a moment—”
    She broke off abruptly because Mary had come in. She stood by the door, straightening her hideous Corliss maid’s cap on the messy gray bird’s nest of her hair.
    “There’s a gentleman to see you, Miss Connie,” she said. “He says he’s from the police.”
    It had, of course, to happen then. In a way it was more alarming right in the middle of our planning than if he’d arrived before we’d even started. And suppose Ala came home while the policeman was still here. If she barged in unrehearsed! How could I have been such a moron as not to have anticipated this and got some sort of story straight with her?
    Connie and I looked at each other gauntly.
    “What about Ala?” I said.
    “She didn’t say when she’d be back. She might—”
    “Tell him you aren’t in.”
    “Yes.” Connie spun around to Mary. “Tell him I’m not here, Mary. Tell him you don’t know when I’ll be back. Say…”
    She must have heard the footsteps a fraction of a second before I did, for she stopped. We both turned to the library door as a man walked in, a tall, youngish man in a neat gray suit.
    “Good afternoon,” he said. “I hope you’ll excuse me for following the maid in like this.”
    He smiled. It was a pleasant—much too pleasant—smile, and his face, composed, with very bright, intelligent eyes, wasn’t like a policeman’s face at all. It was—what? A priest’s face, perhaps? A face which would have gone with one of those quiet, ascetic monks painted by Zurbaran.
    He was looking at Connie. “Mrs. Hadley?”
    “Yes,” said Connie.
    The eyes—were they blue or gray?—turned to me. “And Mr. Hadley?”
    I nodded.
    “I’m Lieutenant Trant,” he said, “from the Homicide Division. I’m lucky, Mr. Hadley, to find you home so early from work.”
    There was nothing ominous in the way he made that remark, nothing on which I could put my finger. But, suddenly, I realized that outwitting the police wasn’t going to be at all the sort of thing I’d expected it to be. Let it begin… I remembered the carefree way in which I’d said that last night when Eve had been in my arms.
    Lieutenant Trant was looking around the room, summing it up and summing us up, I felt, through it.
    “I’m afraid,” he said, “that I’ve come on a rather unpleasant mission.”

 
Nine
    Connie had gone grand. She always did with people whose presence in the house wasn’t strictly social—with piano tuners and fund raisers and men come to fix the plumbing. Although I knew it was only a nervous habit, it invariably jarred me, but now I welcomed it as probably the most effective defense in our most indefensible circumstances. Very much the Consuelo Corliss, she gave the detective a gracious, almost patronizing smile.
    “Do sit down, Lieutenant… er…”
    “Trant,” said the Lieutenant and, smiling back at her with equal steadiness, spelled it out. “T—R—A—N—T.”
    He gestured to indicate a chair for her. She hesitated and then sat down. He sat down, too. It had been a tiny exchange, but the Lieutenant had definitely won it. For a moment he watched my wife with his quiet smile, paying no attention to me at all.
    Then he said, “I understand, Mrs. Hadley, that you’ve made rather a protégé of a young Canadian called Donald Saxby.”
    Still being gracious, Connie said, “We’ve read the evening papers, Lieutenant. It’s quite terrible.”
    “So you know he’s been murdered?”
    “Murdered?” echoed Connie. “Of course, we were afraid it might be that. The papers mentioned two shots. How awful. Isn’t that awful, George? But, of course, Lieutenant, if there’s any possible way in which either my husband or I can help…” She let a small movement of her hand