12

WEDNESDAY, 7:15 P.M. TO 9:05 P.M.

Lieutenant Weigand made a little dot with his pencil after each of the names on the sheet of paper before him. He looked at the names and the little dots and then he looked across the desk which had been George Merle’s and shook his head at Captain Theodore Sullivan of the Criminal Identification Division of the State Police.

“So,” Sullivan said. “It isn’t very helpful, Lieutenant.”

It wasn’t, Weigand agreed, helpful at all. It left them where they had started. No one admitted having been near the beach cottage at around ten minutes to six, which was, as nearly as they could reconstruct it, the time Pam North was slugged. Everyone was sure that he was somewhere else—and no one could prove that he was somewhere else. Mary Hunter and Joshua Merle had been talking then—or about then. They had not particularly noticed the time. But about that time—they thought without conviction that it was a little later—they had parted and Merle had gone in search of Weldon Jameson. He said he merely “wanted to talk to Jameson.” He had, by his own account, been unsuccessful in finding Jameson. Mary Hunter had sat where he left her. “I just sat there. I wasn’t thinking about the time. I didn’t care what time it was!”

It did not sound, Weigand thought, as if there had been the reconciliation between the two that Pam North had expected—that had, he guessed, brought the Norths and Mary with them to Elmcroft. Why, he wondered, had there been no reconciliation? The presumptive reason was that neither believed the other—or that one did not believe the other—when they talked, as surely they had talked, of that summer afternoon two years earlier when George Merle had called a girl who looked very young in a white play dress into his study and looked at her coldly across the desk. This desk—Weigand’s fingers tapped it.

He thought he knew the answer to the question he had to answer. One stuck out, unreconcilably. But if he did not know the answer—if that discrepancy could be reconciled—then any continuing antagonism between Mary Hunter and Joshua Merle might be interesting.

He put that aside, and returned to his list. Jameson—and his pencil hovered over the name as he recapitulated for himself and Captain Sullivan—had not been able to understand why Josh Merle could not find him. He had been in plain sight. Or, if he had not actually been in plain sight from all angles, he had certainly not been hard to find. He had been sitting, he said, in a deck chair down by the pool, his back to the terrace—hidden from the terrace, no doubt, by the canvas of the chair. But from the pool, he told the detectives, he had been in plain enough sight for anyone. He had seen no one by the pool.

Laurel Burke had been, she indicated, practically everywhere. “Just looking around,” she told them with a certain emphasis. “Just sizing things up, Miss Burke?” Sullivan had asked her, and she had smiled at him without answering. She had been through as much of the house as she could get through unobtrusively, which seemed to mean that she had not actually forced locked doors. She had been down by the pool, but she did not remember that she had seen Jameson there. But she did not remember that she had not seen him there.

“I wasn’t looking for Donny,” she said, and corrected herself quickly. “For Mr. Jameson.”

The point was interesting, and they went into it. She stuck for a little while to the argument that she had merely used a nickname—a nickname she thought appropriate—facetiously. But after only a little questioning she gave that argument up as hardly worth the trouble. Very well, she had known Weldon Jameson before. Very slightly. She had met him one night at a night club when she was there with Murdock. No, not with George Merle. Yes, Jameson had a girl with him. No, she had never seen the girl before—or since. She was a—

“—oh, a Miss Jones for all I know,” she said. “What did I care who she was. I’d heard about Mr. Jameson, of course—I knew him—he was a guest at Mr. Merle’s. And Murdock knew him and he and the girl came over. We all had a few drinks and the girl called him Donny. So I called him Donny.”

“That,” Sullivan said, “doesn’t wash, Miss Burke.”

“Doesn’t it,” she said, with only a mockery of polite interest. “So what?”

There was no immediate answer to that one, but it was still one to be answered. They put Miss Burke aside.

Mrs. Burnwood had gone to her room to lie down. She had locked the door behind her—“to keep out intruders,” she explained, a little balefully—and she had lain down. She had got up again and been ready to come down when Weigand sent for her. Her voice curled reproachfully over the word “sent.” She assumed she had been lying down from around five thirty until after six. She couldn’t prove it.

“None of them,” Sullivan pointed out, “can prove anything.”

“Right,” Weigand said. “A disability they share with us.”

“Yeah,” Sullivan said.

Not even Ann Merle and Stanley Goode had been together uninterruptedly through any period which certainly covered the time of the attack on Pam North and the killing of Wickersham Potts. Ann had seen her aunt go into the house, had thought she looked distraught, and had gone after her to see whether there was anything she could do. She had arrived just as her aunt turned the key in the lock. She had decided there was nothing she could do; she had stopped by her room to redo her hair and when she went back to the terrace, Stanley Goode was no longer there. He had come out of the house a few minutes later—how many minutes, what time it was then—those things were anybody’s guess. Ann’s guess was that it was a little before six.

Goode had sat for a few minutes after Ann left him and then had gone to a lavatory in the house. He had been gone perhaps ten minutes, come back and found Ann still missing, had sauntered down toward the pool and then had discovered that he had left his watch in the lavatory where he washed his hands. He went back and got the watch and came out again, this time finding Ann.

“And what time was it by your watch?” Weigand wanted to know.

Goode looked at him and shrugged.

“Personally,” Weigand commented to Sullivan, “I never put a watch on without noticing what time it is, do you?”

“I don’t know,” Sullivan said. “I never thought about it. Probably not.”

Jerry North had been talking with Mullins, had had a drink or two with Mullins, standing somewhere near the bar, and then had suddenly become convinced that he had left the car ignition turned on. He had gone out to the car circle to look.

“And had you, Jerry?” Bill Weigand asked.

“No,” Jerry said. “Of course not. But, as Pam would say, it’s a thing like leaving the water turned on. Or the oven going. You know better, but there you are.”

He had come back and Mullins was gone.

“With me,” Sullivan explained, at that point. “We—we went out and looked at the garden.”

“Why, for God’s sake?” Bill Weigand asked him.

“I like gardens,” Sullivan explained simply. “So does the sergeant. Didn’t you know?”

“No,” Weigand said. “He lives in Brooklyn.”

“He still likes gardens,” Sullivan said. “So we went to look at the Merles’—it’s down beyond the pool.”

“Right,” Bill said. “How is it?”

“It needs water,” Sullivan said. He reflected. “All gardens always need water,” he added.

Weigand finished his list and looked at Sullivan. He said you would think that, with so many people around, some two of them—excepting Mullins and Sullivan himself—would have been together. You’d think somebody would have known what time it was.

“Why?” Sullivan said. “What time is it now? Without looking.”

“About seven thirty,” Weigand said, without looking. Then he looked. It was seven twenty-eight.

“All right,” Sullivan said. “Have it your own way. But these people didn’t.”

“Or,” Bill told him, “they say they didn’t. For reasons of their own.”

There was, Sullivan agreed, always that. He asked Weigand what the discrepancy was, and Weigand, with enough background to make it comprehensible, told him. Sullivan thought about it and nodded. He said maybe it would do the trick but that he’d hate to go to court on it. He wanted to know the motive, and Bill Weigand told him that—guessed at that for him. Sullivan said he still wouldn’t want to go to court.

“My God,” Bill said, with some irritability. “Do you think that if I had a case to take to court I wouldn’t make the pinch? Do you think I’d be waiting for another move out of our murderer?”

Pam North leaned back in the lounge chair on the terrace, her head turned toward Jerry sitting beside her. This was partly so she could look at Jerry, but it was largely because there was a tender bump on the back of her head. Her head ached a little, but not too insistently. She sipped a long rum collins and her mind went around and around. It was worse than the headache.

“Think, Jerry,” she directed. “What kinds of things are there?”

“Sounds,” Jerry told her. “Smells. Touch—did you touch something? Involuntarily—the clothing of the person who struck you? Did you feel—oh, say heavy rough tweed—and identify somebody who was wearing a tweed jacket?”

“Nobody is,” Pam told him. “Nobody’s wearing any jacket at all.”

It was, Jerry told her, merely an example.

“It would,” Pam said, “be a much better example in October. Anyway, it’s an obvious example. This must have been more subtle, like—oh, the dampness of a bathing suit.”

“What?” Jerry said. “What’s subtle about a damp bathing suit?”

The way she meant it, Pam said, there might be a lot. Because there might be a dampness—a coolness—to be felt by merely being a few inches away from a damp bathing suit, even without touching it.

“That,” she explained, “would be extremely subtle, I think.”

“Well,” Jerry said, “was it that?”

Pam looked at him in surprise. She said of course not. She said it was merely an example. “Like,” she said, “a brown and green jacket out of very heavy tweed. Like one in—”

“No,” Jerry said, firmly. “I don’t like women in tweed. So don’t tell me where one was.”

She smiled at him. She said tweed wore forever, but all right.

“As a matter of fact,” she said, “I don’t think it was—what is the word?—at all.”

“Tactile,” Jerry told her. “If you don’t know what it was you can’t remember about the person who hit you, and by which you could identify him or her if you could remember, how do you know it wasn’t tactile. Or tactual.”

“Jerry!” Pam said. “Are you all right?”

“Perfectly,” Jerry said. “How, Pam?”

“Because,” Pam said, “it doesn’t—oh, feel right. It doesn’t feel as if it were something I’d touched. Maybe it was a smell or a sound. I’ll just have to wait for it to come back. Only—and this is odd—I have a feeling of dread that it will come back. What do you think that means, Jerry?”

Jerry said he was afraid it meant that whatever it was she could not remember would, when she remembered it, identify somebody she liked as the person who had killed Potts.

“And,” Pam said, feeling her bump, “hit me. I hope not.”

There was a considerable pause, while both sipped their drinks. Then Jerry said, idly, that something would happen to bring it back to her.

“You’ll hear something,” he said, “or smell something or taste something and it will all come back to you. Things do.”

“Well,” Pam said, “I’m almost sure I didn’t taste anybody. There wasn’t time and anyway—but probably you’re right. Probably the condition—whatever it was—will repeat itself and then—” She broke off and sipped again. Then, suddenly, she sat up.

“Jerry!” she said. “I can’t. You know I can’t. Because Bill doesn’t know and if we just sit whoever it is will do it again. Because somebody else knows, or because he wasn’t through the first time and needs another murder to make things come straight. I’ve got to try to bring it back, whatever it was.”

She couldn’t, Jerry told her, do it that way. She couldn’t force it. Pam listened and shook her head. She said she could try.

“How?” Jerry wanted to know.

“I can smell people, to start with,” Pam said. “I can smell everybody here.”

Jerry said, “Pam!” and started up, but she was up before him and when he started to go with her she made furious motions of negation. He would spoil everything, the gestures meant, and when he still hesitated, she came close and whispered with great emphasis:

“Jerry!” she whispered. “Two people can’t go around smelling people.”

A little weakly, after that, Gerald North sat down. He consoled himself that most of the others were on the terrace and that Pam, even while engaged in smelling them, would be in plain sight. It also occurred to Jerry that never before had he seen anybody going around and smelling other people, with malice aforethought.

There were four people at the next table and Pam started, because he was nearest, with Stanley Goode. She hesitated a moment behind him, evidently uncertain how to go about it, and decided—it appeared to her fascinated and somewhat awed husband—on the direct approach. She simply leaned over and sniffed Mr. Goode, rather as if he were a piece of doubtful meat.

Ann Merle, who was sitting to the right of Goode, looked at Pam North and shook her head slightly and blinked. The light, although the sun was setting and the shadow was now far out on the lawn, was good enough for Jerry to see her blink. Stanley Goode also saw her blink and looked at her inquiringly. He also, Jerry thought, looked as if he were uneasy. Apparently being smelled had the same effect on a sensitive person as being stared at. It made them feel something was wrong.

Pam, who had evidently not noticed Ann Merle’s surprised observation, leaned over and sniffed again. Then she stood up, apparently to consider the odor.

“What?” Stanley Goode said suddenly. “Did you—who is—what?”

Apparently, Jerry decided, Pam must have sniffed audibly.

“What?” Pam said, with quick presence of mind. “Did you say something, Mr. Goode?”

Mr. Goode shook his head slightly, in a puzzled sort of way.

“No,” he said. “Oh, Mrs. North. I thought you said something.”

“Me?” Mrs. North said. “I?”

“I,” Ann Merle said, a little darkly, “thought so too, Mrs. North.”

“No,” Pam said. “I didn’t say anything. What would I say?”

“It sounded,” Stanley Goode said, “as if you said, ‘Uh, uh’ in a whisper.”

“Why no,” Pam said, “why would I say ‘uh, uh.’ I mean—is it a joke, or something? I mean, I was just—just walking around.” She looked at Stanley Goode, and Jerry North could imagine that her eyes were round and surprised. “I don’t say ‘uh, uh’ when I’m just walking around,” Pam pointed out. She paused and considered. “If ever,” she said. She put her head up, as she waited for an answer to that one, and it occurred to Jerry that she was sniffing again, in plain sight this time. She seemed to have her nose trained on Ann Merle.

“Oh,” Stanley Goode said. “I seem to—I seem to have got things mixed up. I’m sorry, Mrs. North.”

“Oh,” Pam said, “that’s all right. It might happen to anyone.”

That, Jerry decided, was an exaggeration. What had just happened to Stanley Goode was not really likely to happen to anyone.

Pam moved on and Jerry, fascinated, got up and moved on behind her. To all appearances, he hoped, they were merely sauntering. Pam moved on to Mary Hunter, who sat at the left of Stanley Goode, and hardly paused. Apparently, Jerry decided, she already knew what Mary Hunter smelled like. Jerry tried to remember and succeeded—she smelled of a Chanel, not No. 5. Very pleasantly. Jerry, as he thought this, came up behind Stanley Goode, and as he did so he felt a disturbing compulsion coming over him—an alarming curiosity. What did Stanley Goode smell like? Before he had time to stop himself, Jerry North realized he had to find out.

Alarmed at himself, but quite unable to do anything about it, Jerry North found himself approaching Stanley Goode from behind, a little as if he were stalking him. Mr. Goode, already somewhat unnerved, apparently felt his approach, because when Jerry was still a stride or two away he moved his shoulders a little nervously and started to turn. There was only one thing to do, and Jerry North did it. He advanced resolutely and clapped Stanley Goode heartily on the shoulder, at the same time bending over him in what must be, Jerry fleetingly realized, a rather awful parody of extreme friendliness.

“How are you, old man?” Mr. North demanded, heartily, using of all locutions that which he always, in his rational moments, found most offensive.

Stanley Goode jumped convulsively under his hand. He said, “What!” in a sudden, loud voice and started up. Then he said, “Oh,” and sat down again. But he sat tentatively, and he looked around at Gerald North with disturbed surprise. “All right, I guess,” he said. “Why?”

“That’s good,” Jerry said, with a kind of horrible heartiness. “Well—be seeing you.”

Pam had passed, and no doubt smelled Joshua Merle, who made the fourth at the table. Jerry, staggering a little with embarrassment, went after her.

Stanley Goode smelled of tobacco, some kind of talcum and rye whiskey. Ann Merle smelled of some kind of flower toilet water and hardly at all of rum. Jerry did not stop to smell Joshua Merle—never, he told himself, would he smell anybody again if he could help it. It was the sort of thing which led to misunderstandings. Jerry paused at that thought. He decided, after the pause, that misunderstanding was the best thing it could possibly lead to. It might, it occurred to him, lead to understanding, which would obviously be worse.

Pam had gone to join Weldon Jameson at the bar. She was standing much closer to him than she usually stood to other men than Jerry, and even from a distance Jerry thought he could detect her nose vibrating delicately. Jerry found he was near a chair and, with a small groan, he sat in it. He sat in it and wished it would get dark.

He was still sitting in the same chair half an hour later when Pam found him. She sat down on the grass behind him and looked at him thoughtfully.

“Well,” she said, “I smelled everybody. Mr. Goode and Ann and Mary and Mr. Merle and Mr. Jameson and the Burke girl—my!”

“Yes,” Jerry said.

“Just ‘my’,” Pam told him. “Something very remarkable—something people would call ‘Torrid Night’ or something. And gin of course.”

She paused and thought.

“Of course,” she said, “everybody smells of something to drink, which is confusing. Mrs. Burnwood smells of sachet, lavender sachet. Isn’t that nice?”

“Is it?” Jerry said. “I never thought so, particularly.”

“Well,” Pam said, “maybe ‘appropriate’ is better than nice. It was a very correct way for her to smell. And she hardly smelled of anything to drink at all.”

“And—” Jerry began, and then Bill Weigand came up. He sat down on the other side of Pam.

“And what,” Bill said in a considered tone, “have you been up to, Pam? You’ve been talking to everybody here, and standing close to them and, so far as I could tell, feeling the material in their clothes. Is it—a new game or something?”

“She’s been smelling them, too,” Jerry said. “She’s smelled everybody on the place, except you.”

“Oh,” Pam said. “I smelled him, too. He’s tobacco, chiefly.”

Bill Weigand looked at them, and shook his head slowly. He waited. Pam told him. He was amused, but he was not wholly amused.

“If I saw you,” he pointed out, “other people saw you. They may have wondered, too, what you were up to. One person may have wondered a great deal.”

Pam shook her head. She said it was because Bill knew her, and she wasn’t acting as he expected her to act. To people who didn’t know her, she probably seemed perfectly normal.

“Really,” she said, “I made it all look like nothing at all, unless you were looking for something.”

Somebody among those present, Bill pointed out, was looking for something. That was precisely it. Somebody was looking for anything—somebody was seeing suspicion in every movement, somebody was starting each time leaves rustled in a breeze; somebody had the wary watchfulness of the hunted.

“And,” Jerry said, “if you really think you didn’t look as if you were up to something, Pam—well.”

“By the way,” Pam said, “I didn’t know you knew Mr. Goode, Jerry. Not well enough to—hit him.”

“What?” Bill said.

Pam looked at Jerry, who looked back at her.

“Oh,” Pam said, “nothing. Just a little joke—a little family joke.”

Bill Weigand did not look as if he believed either of them, but he let it lie.

“Well,” he said, “since you did do it—did you find out anything? Was it an odor—or the sound of a voice—or the feel of something?”

Pam shook her head slowly.

“I don’t know,” she said. “Things came back. Mrs. Burnwood’s sachet made me remember a rainy day when I was a little girl and I was playing with the sewing machine and the belt came off. And Laurel Burke made me remember the opening of an awful play with an ocelot in it, because the woman who sat next to me smelled like that. And Weldon Jameson’s coat—he is wearing a coat now, Jerry—made me remember something not very clear about a boy and an ice cream cone. And—and that sort of thing. But nothing made me remember anything more about the person who hit me and killed Mr. Potts.”

She paused and looked at Jerry first and then at Bill.

“Only,” she said, “something brought it nearer. Not enough nearer—just a little nearer.”

“Good,” Jerry said. “What was it?”

“I don’t know,” Pam said. “It was sort of—sort of delayed. And then I couldn’t remember what it was. But I don’t think it was a smell.”

She paused again.

“It’s very exasperating,” she said. “It’s just on the tip of my mind.”

Jerry told her to forget it. He told her that it would come back most quickly if she didn’t try to force it; he told her, urgently, that Bill was right—that whoever was being hunted was alert and uneasy; that anything she did which was odd, which forced the issue, might frighten him into violence. And that if it did, she might be in the path of the violence.

“After all,” Jerry said with finality. “Once is enough. You’ve been knocked out for getting in the way. For God’s sake, darling, stay out of the way!”

“But—” Pam started, and this time Bill Weigand interrupted her.

“Anyway, Pam,” he said, “I know—I’m pretty sure I know.”

“Who?” Pam said.

Bill Weigand shook his head. He said not yet. He shook his head again when Pam asked why, if he knew, he did not arrest whoever it was.

“Because,” he said, “I haven’t a shadow of a case. I’ve a discrepancy—and a hunch.” He smiled at her. “Neither of which,” he said firmly, “am I going to share with you, my dear. Because probably you would go up and ask him—or her—why he did it, and that might make him mad.” He paused and smiled again. “Or her mad,” he added. “And we don’t want a murderer mad at you, Pam—not this time.”

It was almost dark, and for an hour Pam North had been going over the case in her mind, looking for the discrepancy. She had not found it and Jerry had not been helpful. She had taken up, one after another, the people involved in the case and she had tried to remember all that they had said—all that Bill had told her they had said and all that she remembered—and nothing had come out.

It was not that she lacked theories—she had an overabundance of theories. She had a theory to fit Joshua Merle and another to fit Mary Hunter and yet another, which she liked even less, to fit them both together—a theory which involved conspiracy, and pretense of estrangement and murder for money. It was a theory which she could not flatly disprove; it was also a theory in which she could not believe, because she did not think it fitted the people. But there was always a chance that the people did not fit what she thought about them.

It was easier to imagine that Laurel Burke was the murderer, if you granted her remarkable effrontery, because only remarkable effrontery would explain her pushing herself—as she was pushing herself—into the middle of things when she might as easily have remained outside them. It was not possible at all to imagine Ann Merle as the one they were looking for because Ann Merle seemed outside so much of it. “But of course,” Pam told herself, “that is really because I’ve just met her, so naturally I feel that she has just come in. But really she has been in all her life. It’s all a matter of perspective.”

“Jerry,” Pam said, “have you gone to sleep? And where is everybody?”

“No,” he said. “But I thought you had. I thought you were all tired out from smelling people and had gone to sleep. Everybody’s around some place. Bill and Sullivan are down at the cottage, with a lot of other State cops. As a matter of fact, you must have been asleep.”

“No,” Pam said. “Anyway, not much. Why don’t we go home?”

“I don’t know,” Jerry said. He had got a waterproof cushion shaped like a wedge and was leaning against it, with a glass in his hand. “Why don’t we go home?”

Pam did not answer him. It was not dark yet, but the sun was far down and the shadow was almost at the swimming pool. The light was fading slowly, as if it had all summer to fade in.

“What was the discrepancy, Jerry?” Pam said. “Bill’s discrepancy?”

“Something about the check?” Jerry said. “Something about the gun? I don’t know.”

Jerry spoke as if he, like the light, had all summer to fade in, and were going about it in a leisurely fashion. He spoke as if he were thinking about something else.

“Jerry!” Pam said. “How many drinks have you had?”

“I don’t know,” Jerry said. “About the right amount.”

Pam reached over with her foot and kicked him gently. He said, “Hey!” but not as if it really mattered. Pam asked him again where everybody was.

“Ann and her tennis player went off somewhere,” he said. “Down by the pool, probably. And Mary went down that way too, about half an hour ago, when you were sleeping. About Jameson I don’t know, unless he’s paired off with the Burke.” He paused, took a drink and reflected. “Which wouldn’t be healthy, I shouldn’t think,” he said after he had swallowed.

“Healthy?” Pam repeated and Jerry said, “Yes, healthy.”

“Because,” he said, “either she killed Merle, in which case she isn’t a healthy person to be around, or she didn’t. In which case she still isn’t a healthy person to be around. She knew Jameson before, you know.”

“Jerry,” Pam said. “How did you know? I mean—how did you know?”

Jerry sat up and looked at her and said, “Really, Pam,” and said that of course he knew—or guessed. “Even before Bill told me,” he said. “She was talking at him when she lugged in the Zero Club.”

“Why?” Pam wanted to know. “Why was she talking at him? She was talking at anybody. At everybody.”

“Intuition,” Jerry told her. “My intuition. Masculine intuition. Or did you think there wasn’t any?”

Pam said of course she didn’t think there wasn’t any. She said everybody had intuition and that it didn’t matter about sex. Jerry looked up at her and she said that he knew perfectly well what she meant. She said he was always catching her up when he knew perfectly well she was already up.

“My intuition usually consists in understanding you,” Jerry said. “I’ll give you that.”

“Intuition,” Pam said, “merely consists in not going around Robin Hood’s barn. It’s not taking all the steps. Which doesn’t mean that the steps aren’t there. They’re understood. Like nouns.”

“What?” Jerry said.

“Like nouns,” Pam said. “Anyway, I think it was nouns. The noun is understood. Or was it the verb? In grammar.”

Jerry said he didn’t know.

“Anyway,” Pam said, “that’s what intuition is. Yours or anybody’s. It’s merely taking a short cut through the woods because you’ve already been around by the road and know the way. You knew it was Jameson that Burke was talking at because you’ve seen people talk at people and you know how it looks and sounds. So when you saw it again you took a short cut through the woods instead of going around the barn. Why Robin Hood’s, incidentally?”

Jerry said he didn’t know.

“Well, anyway,” said Pam, who was sitting up now and even leaning forward a little so she could look at Jerry. “That’s how you knew it was Jameson. It’s perfectly simple.”

Jerry said, “Oh.”

“Perfectly,” Pam said. “Only of course you were wrong. You got lost in the woods somewhere. If it was anybody, it was Josh Merle. Only I’m not sure it was anybody. I think she was just fishing.”

“Fishing?” Jerry said. “For what?”

That, Pam said, she did not know. Any more than she knew what it was she remembered, but had forgotten, about the person who struck her and killed Mr. Potts.

“It’s very exasperating,” she said. “Here Bill knows and if I could remember we’d know too, or if we could work it out the way he did.”

“We could use intuition,” Jerry said.

Pam shook her head. She said that Bill hadn’t used intuition, or at least she didn’t think he had.

There were footsteps on the flagstones behind them and the footsteps ended and Stanley Goode came across the grass toward them, the sound of his steps lost in the grass. He stopped and he spoke lightly. He asked if they had happened to notice where Ann Merle had got to. And then he looked down at Pam and seemed surprised at the response to his question.

The response was unquestionably surprising. Pam North did not answer—she did not speak at all. But she looked at him with eyes which grew round and startled and it seemed to Jerry, watching her, that something had happened which to Pam was frightening. He started to speak, but then Pam spoke instead.

“Mr. Goode!” she said. “Did you walk across the terrace just now? The—the hard part? The flagstones?”

“Why,” Stanley Goode said, and his words came slowly and the note in his voice was odd. “Yes, I guess I did. I came from the living room, so I must have walked across the terrace. Why, Mrs. North?”

“Oh,” Pam said. “So that—” She broke off. “I’m afraid I don’t know where Ann went, Mr. Goode,” she said. “I thought she was with you.”

Pam stood up as she spoke and Jerry, not knowing precisely why, stood with her. He was surprised, but pleased, when she put her hand in his.

“Perhaps she’s down by the pool, Mr. Goode,” Pamela North said, very politely. “Perhaps you would find her if you looked down there.”

Mr. Goode looked no less puzzled, but he accepted the change in Pamela North with politeness. He said that that was a jolly good idea and that he would go down and have a look. He went off, not hurrying, and Pam waited a moment before her grip on Jerry’s hand tightened and she was pulling him toward the terrace.

“Jerry,” she said. “Jerry! We’ve got to hurry!”

“Hurry?” Jerry said. “Hurry where, Pam?”

“Anywhere,” Pam said. “Where everybody is. We’ve got to find people, Jerry. Because if we don’t it will be Mr. Murdock all over again.”

She started off. Jerry held her a moment. He told her, not quite as a question, that now she knew.

“Of course,” she said. “Of course.” She was impatient.

“But,” Jerry said, “apparently it was something Goode did that tipped you off. And Goode went down toward the pool.”

“Goode?” Pam repeated. “Oh—Goode! But Jerry, he’s just—what’s the thing that makes other things come together?”

“That makes—?” Jerry said. “Oh, a catalyst. A catalytic agent.”

“Of course,” Pam said. “Now will you hurry?”