“Don’t be too certain the police won’t think so.”
“Why?”
I said, “Roberta Fenn was working in a bank. They’ll ask the banker what he knows. He’ll say that yesterday afternoon a man came to see her, claiming to be an investigator trying to clean up an estate. Roberta Fenn talked with him. The young man was waiting for her at the bank when she got off work. He put Roberta in a taxicab, and they drove off. The young man was in her apartment when the man who was murdered called last night. The man was jealous.”
“Where’s Roberta while all this was going on?” Bertha Cool asked.
“Roberta,” I said, “is, one, the one who pulled the trigger on the gun, or, two, sprawled out on the floor where we couldn’t see her without going into the room, or, three, the person for whom the murderer is waiting.”
Bertha said, “I think the thing to do is to get into a taxicab, go down to police headquarters, and tell them the whole circumstances.”
I stopped, swung her around to the curb, and pointed to a cab that was parked on the opposite side of the street. “There’s a cab,” I said. “Get in.”
Bertha hesitated.
“Go ahead.”
“You don’t think so, do you, Donald?”