“It’s a fair inference. Mrs. Cool is still here.”
“The job I’m working on is finding someone who disappeared from Los Angeles. That’s where the trail starts, and that’s a mighty good place to pick it up.”
He ignored me. “Suddenly last night out of a clear sky, you announced you were going to Los Angeles on the first available train. You left the Sal Sagev Hotel, which is right at the depot, with lots of time to spare. You had every motive, every incentive, and every opportunity to shoot Harry Beegan, and you know that as well as I do.”
“He was shot in the girl’s apartment?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“How do you fix the time so accurately and yet still have an indefinite interim period?”
“The Clutmers were in their apartment until they went down to the station to meet some friends who were coming through. They left the train and walked directly back to their apartment. They hadn’t heard anything at all — no sounds coming from the next apartment. They’d have heard voices raised in an argument. Unquestionably, they’d have heard a shot. That fixes the time of the murder absolutely within those limits.”
“Unless the Clutmers are lying.”
“Why should they lie?”
“Suppose they didn’t like this man, Beegan, and had been waiting for an opportunity to do something about it? When was the body discovered?”