stubbornly:
"They were murdered."
"La strega!" whispered Ricori. I glared at him.
"Quit beating around the bush, Braile. What's your evidence?"
"You were away from Peters almost two hours; I was with him practically from start to finish. As I
studied him, I had the feeling that the whole trouble was in the mind-that it was not his body, his nerves,
his brain, that refused to function, but his will. Not quite that, either. Put it that his will had ceased to care
about the functions of the body-and was centered upon killing it!"
"What you're outlining now is not murder but suicide. Well, it has been done. I've watched a few die
because they had lost the will to live-"