“What’s that got to do with it?”
I said, “The police haven’t put all the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle together yet, but when they do, this is the way the picture will look. You had a slick scheme to rob your husband of his triumph. Nostrander was mixed up in that scheme. So was Roberta Fenn. Roberta didn’t know the details. Nostrander did. He’s the one who thought the whole thing up.”
“It was a swell scheme. It worked like a charm. Your husband should have been thrown into such a panic that he’d start paying through the nose. But your husband happens to be made of a little sterner stuff. He came on to New Orleans to investigate. He got in touch with the process server who served the papers. He’ll probably get in touch with private detectives, if he hasn’t a staff of them in New Orleans already. He’d have found out about Nostrander. Nostrander would have been the key witness. If Nostrander was put on the carpet, on a charge of conspiracy, he might talk. If he talked, you’d lose a lot of money. If he didn’t talk, you stood to make a big shakedown. There was one way of insuring Nostrander’s silence. That was with a thirty-eight caliber bullet right in the middle of the heart. Better women than you have succumbed to less urgent temptations.”
She said, “You’re crazy.”
I said, “That’s the way the police are going to reason.”
She glanced almost helplessly at Roberta Fenn.
“Now then,” I said, “suppose you tell me just how you became acquainted with Archibald C. Smith, and why you happened to give him a letter to Roberta.”
There seemed to be genuine surprise on her face. “Smith! Good heavens, what’s that old fossil got to do with it?”
“That’s what I want to know.”
“Now I know you’re crazy. He hasn’t anything to do with it.”