'Dr. Godwin's patient? I don't believe it. He wouldn't go behind my back.' For all her half-cynical insight into his na ture, she seemed to know very little about him.
'Dr. Godwin says he did, apparently for scme years.'
'There must be a mistake. Roy has nothing the matter with his mind.' There was a vibrating silence. 'Has he?'
'I was going to ask you, but I'm sorry I brought it up. Take it easy, Mrs. Bradshaw.'
'How can I, with my boy in jeopardy?'
She wanted to hold me on the line, siphoning comfort into her frightened old ears, but I said good night and hung up. One suspect had been eliminated: Madge Gerhardi: the description didn't fit her and never could have. Laura was still in the running.
It wouldn't make sense, of course, for Bradshaw to divorce her and remarry her immediately. But I had only Bradshaw's word for his recent marriage to Laura. I was gradually realizing that his word stretched like an elastic band, and was as easily broken. I looked up Laura's address--she lived in College Heights--and was copying it into my notebook when the phone rang.
It was Jerry Marks. McGee denied having told the woman Tish or anyone else about the affair between Bradshaw and his wife. The only one he had discussed the subject with was Bradshaw.
'Bradshaw may have told the woman himself,' I said. 'Or possibly the woman overheard McGee.'
'Possibly, but hardly likely. McGee says his conversation with Bradshaw took place in Bradshaw's house.'
'He could have had the woman there while his mother was away.'
'You think she lives around here?'
'Somewhere in Southern California, anyway. I believe Bradshaw's been leading a split-level life with her, and that she's responsible for both the McGee and the Haggerty killings. I just got an improved description of her from Bradshaw's mother. Better pass it along to the police. Do you have something to write on?'
'Yes. I'm sitting at the Sheriff's desk.'
I recited Lelitia Macready's description, but I didn't say anything about Laura Sutherland. I wanted to talk to her myself.
College Heights was a detached suburb on the far side of the campus from the city. It was a hodgepodge of tract houses and fraternity houses, duplexes and apartment buildings, interspersed with vacant lots sprouting for-sale signs. A boy with a guitar in one of the lighted fraternity houses was singing that this land belongs to you and me.
Laura lived in one of the better apartments, a garden apartment built around an open court with a swimming pool. A shirt-sleeved man slapping mosquitoes in a deck chair by the pooi pointed out her door to me and mentioned with some complacency that he owned the place.
'Is anybody with her?'
'I don't think so. She did have a visitor, but he went home.'
'Who was he?'
The man peered up at my face. 'That's her private business, mister.'
'I expect it was Dean Bradshaw, from the college.'
'If you know, why ask?'
I walked to the back of the court and knocked on her door. She opened it on a chain. Her face had lost a good deal of its rosy beauty. She had on a dark suit, as if she was in mourning.
'What do you want? It's late.'
'Too late for us to have a talk, Mrs. Bradshaw?'
'I'm not Mrs. Bradshaw,' she said without much conviction. 'I'm not married.'
'Roy said you were last night. Which one of you is lying?'
'Please, my landlord's out there.' She unchained the door and stepped back out of the widening light. 'Come inside if you must.'
She closed the door and chained it behind me. I was looking at her instead of the room, but I had the impression of a tastefully decorated place where shaded lights gleamed peacefully on wooden and ceramic surfaces. I was searching her face for traces of a past wholly different from her present. There were no visible traces, no cruel lines or pouches of dissipation. But she hadn't much peace in her. She was watching me as though I was a burglar.
'What are you afraid of?'
'I'm not afraid,' she said in a frightened voice. She tried to control it with her hand at her throat. 'I resent your barging into my home and making personal remarks.'
'You invited me in, more or less.'
'Only because you were talking indiscreetly.'
'I called you by your married name. What's your objection to it?'
'I _have_ no objection,' she said with a wan smile. 'I'm very proud of it. But my husband and I are keeping it a secret.'
'A secret from Letitia Macready?'
She showed no particular reaction to the name. I'd already given up on the idea that it could be hers. No matter how well preserved her body or her skin might be, she was clearly too young. When Bradshaw married Letitia, Laura couldn't have been more than a girl in her teens.
'Letitia who?' she said.
'Letitia Macready. She's also known as Tish.'
'I have no idea who you're talking about.'
'I'll tell you if you really want to know. May I sit down?'
'Please do,' she said without much warmth. I was the messenger who brought bad tidings, the kind they used to kill in the old days.
I sat on a soft leather hassock with my back against the wall. She remained standing.
'You're in love with Roy Bradshaw, aren't you?'
'I wouldn't have married him if I weren't.'
'Just when did you marry him?'
'Two weeks ago last Saturday, September the tenth.' A little color returned to her cheeks with the memory of the day. 'He'd just got back from his European tour. We decided to go to Reno on the spur of the moment.'
'Had you spent some time with him there earlier in the summer?'
She frowned in a puzzled way, and shook her head.
'Whose idea was it to go to Reno?'
'Roy's of course, but I was willing. I've been willing for some time,' she added in a spurt of candor.
'What held up the marriage?'
'It wasn't held _up_, exactly. We postponed it, for various reasons. Mrs. Bradshaw is a very possessive mother, and Roy has nothing of his own except his salary. It may sound mercenary--' She paused in some embarrassment, and tried to think of a better way to phrase it.
'How old is his mother?'
'Somewhere in her sixties. Why?'
'She's a vigorous woman, in spite of her infirmities. She may be around for a long time yet.'
Her eyes flashed with some of their fine old iceberg fire. 'We're not waiting for her to die, if that's what you think. We're simply waiting for the psychological moment. Roy hopes to persuade her to take a more reasonable view of--of me. In the meantime--' She broke off, and looked at me distrustfully. 'But none of this is any concern of yours. You promised to tell me about the Macready person, whoever she is. Tish Macready? The name sounds fictitious.'
'I assure you the woman isn't. Your husband divorced her in Reno shortly before he married you.'
She moved to a chair and sat down very suddenly, as if her legs had lost their strength. 'I don't believe it. Roy has never been married before.'
'He has, though. Even his mother admitted it, after a struggle. It was an unfortunate marriage, contracted when he was a student at Harvard. But he waited until this summer to end it. He spent part of July and
