similar close contact with Ruth Bailey, the Social Registerite maiden lady? How could one who had found
a way to make contact with banker Marshall come equally close to acrobat Standish? And so on-you
perceive the difficulty? To administer whatever it was that caused the deaths-if they were murder-could
have been no casual matter. It implies a certain degree of intimacy. You agree?"
"Partly," he conceded.
"Had all lived in the same neighborhood, we might assume that they might normally have come within
range of the hypothetical killer. But they did not-"
"Pardon me, Dr. Lowell," Ricori interrupted, "but suppose they had some common interest which brought
them within that range."
"What possible common interest could so divergent a group have had?"