"Time enough for the murderer to get back into his office on this side of the switchboard, if he moved quickly."
"Yes, I should think so."
"That was not a question, Miss Lynn. It was a statement. For my part, I'm sure of it ... in view of what you've just said. It could easily have been all of three minutes. Time enough—and to spare."
"Yes...." Lynn murmured, moistening her lips again.
"Just one more question, Miss Prentiss. The typewriters you said you heard clattering away. If one of them had stopped for as long as ten minutes, would you have realized it had stopped—if it started up again the instant you stepped out of your office? Think now. Several typewriters, a great deal of sound, and you were engrossed in your editing. Even if it had been the typewriter in the office next to yours—"
That too, Lynn was to realize later, had been more of a statement than a question, for Fenton did not even wait for her to reply.
He looked directly at Macklin and said: "It's your typewriter I'm talking about, I'm afraid. You didn't know she'd heard the sound of your silenced gun, but the instant she stepped out into the hall some instinct warned you that you'd have nothing to lose by battering away on your machine again. It would certainly help to make her believe you hadn't left this office at all—not even long enough to dart past the reception desk, shoot Helen Lathrup through the head and dart straight back again."
Macklin paled visibly, but not a muscle of his face moved. He sat very quietly returning Fenton's accusing stare, a strangely withdrawn look in his eyes, as if he had half-anticipated exposure and had steeled himself to endure the agony of it, if it came, by erecting a kind of mental block within himself.
"We found the gun you killed her with in Ruth Porges' apartment," Fenton said, not unkindly—he could never bring himself to speak without compassion to a man who was certain to die. "We'll never know where she found it, unless you tell us, but we don't have to know. Ballistics has identified it as the murder gun. You searched her apartment after you strangled her, even tore apart two mattresses in your search. But you didn't look inside the flushing compartment of the toilet. It would have been so easy for you to go into the bathroom, lift the lid and look. But I guess you just didn't think of it.
"It's your gun, Macklin. A war souvenir gun with a long black barrel, the kind of gun some men, with your kind of war record, like to show to friends. Possibly you showed it to her once, but that's also something we'll never know unless you tell us. But she must have known it was your gun or she would not have attempted to hide it. If she'd found a stranger's gun—the gun of someone she had no reason to respect or like or want to protect, she'd have gone straight to the police with it. She must have felt you were justified in killing Helen Lathrup.