Her eyes drifted away from his, then flashed back, as though the wince had been involuntary, and she had willed herself to face him as soon as she realized she had avoided his gaze. “No,” she said, and then added after a moment, “of course not. How could I have known?”
Mason said, “You could have stalled along on the gems some way.”
“Perhaps I could,” she said, “but you put it up to me, cold turkey. I had to think fast and take the course which seemed best.”
Mason got to his feet and walked over to the window. He stared moodily down into the street. A convertible with wire wheels drove up slowly. A tall young man got out. Mason shook his head, turned back to face the woman and said, “It doesn’t make sense.”
“I don’t care,” she said defiantly, “whether it makes sense or not.”
“And then,” Mason told her, “when I told you that Cullens was dead — that he’d been murdered — you streaked out of police headquarters and burned up the roads getting out here.”
“Yes,” she said. “I knew then that there’d be an inquiry, and I didn’t want to get caught in it.”
“Why?”
“Because of Pete,” she said. “Can’t you see? I didn’t want Pete actually to catch me in an affair. That would have been fatal. On the other hand, I didn’t want him to think he could start chasing around and get away with it. If I’d gone out and been a drab little personality, virtuously plodding my way through some routine job which would have barely paid my keep, Pete would have come out and got me. He’d have been contrite on the surface, but he’d have had the smug feeling that I was his woman, that no one else wanted me, that I knew it, that if I left him again, it would be to go to work. He’d let me work a while, until I got good and lonely, and then come and pick me up. But, by going away and sailing on a cruise, I kept him guessing. I wanted to keep him guessing, but I certainly didn’t want any of that guessing to become a cold certainty.”
“You thought an inquiry would make that a cold certainty?”