Bardin shrugged his shoulders. “I dunno. We’ll check on her when we’ve got the time. If she had something to do with it you can bet she would have ripped out the page.”
“That’s right: unless she forgot.”
Bardin made an impatient gesture.
“Well, come on; there are lots of other pretty sights for you to look at.” He moved out into the growing darkness again. “May as well run up in your car. Take it slowly at the second bend. The gardener was shot there.”
Conrad drove up the drive, flanked on either side by giant palms and flowering shrubs. When he had driven three hundred yards or so, Bardin said, “Just round this bend.”
They came upon a parked car by the edge of the drive. Doc Holmes, two interns in white coats and a couple of bored-looking patrolmen were standing in a group with the car’s headlights lighting up their backs.
Conrad and Bardin walked over and joined them. They were grouped around an old, shrivelled-up Chinese, who lay on his back, his yellow, claw-like fingers hooked in his death agony. The front of his white smock was dyed red.
“Hello, Conrad,” Doc Holmes said. He was a little man with a round pink face and a fringe of white hair to frame his bald head. “Come to see our massacre?”
“Just slumming,” Conrad said. “How long has he been dead, Doc?”
“About an hour and a half: not more.”