Her sobbing subsided slowly, and, for a moment, she lay still. Then she lifted herself on one elbow, glared at him, and said in an outraged voice, “What do you mean by that crack?”
“Don’t forget that Margrave has the invention now,” he said cynically. “That’s why you switched from him to Ralph in the first place, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“I think you do.”
Nora Carrol was suddenly stricken again, and tears flowed down her cheeks. “How can you say things like that,” she sobbed, “when Ted is — when he’s l-lying there on the f-floor?”
Shayne said pleasantly, “Skip it if you like. It really doesn’t matter now, I guess.”
At the sound of footsteps hurrying down the hall, he got up and went to the door to admit Will Gentry and Attorney Bates. Officers from the homicide squad, a worried hotel manager, and curious guests pressed in behind him.
“Come in with your notebook, Jervis,” Gentry said to a young officer. “You, too, Bates. Rest of you stay out until I call you.”
He closed the door, looked at Granger’s body, then at Shayne, with lifted brows; and finally at the bed where Bates sat beside Mrs. Carrol, holding both of her hands in his.
Officer Jervis was seated at a table across the room with notebook and pencil ready. “Take this down,” the chief ordered. “Statement from Michael Shayne.” He turned to the redhead and waited.