I didn’t look up from the billiard balls. I said, “You were doing the talking. I thought perhaps that was what you wanted to say, and I’d make it easier for you.”
“That wasn’t what I wanted to say.”
“Why not go ahead and say it, then?”
He said, “All right, I will. I’ve known Mrs. Ashbury for some little time. Before her marriage she was twenty-five pounds lighter, and she looked twenty years younger.”
“High blood pressure can do a lot to a person,” I said.
“Of course it can, but what’s the reason for the blood pressure? Why should her marriage suddenly run her blood pressure up?”
“Why should it?” I asked.
He waited until I glanced up to meet his eyes. He was almost quivering with rage. He said, “The answer is obvious. The persistent, steady hostility of her stepdaughter.”
I put the cue in the rack and said, “Did you want to talk with me about that?”
“Yes.”