It paralleled some of his own thinking so closely that he was startled. But he said, "Well, you can't declare a vendetta, can you?"
"Oh, be quiet!" She looked up at him with a smoldering under her brows. "Of course I don't mean that. But I know who must have done it, and I know he'll have some kind of story, and no one will look past that story, because he seems like such a pathetic case. And he isn't! I know Gene and Peter Michaelis. They got what was coming to them!"
"Too much!" roared Lombardi. "Now you be still!" She ignored him. Her eyes would not release Kintyre's.
"Well?" she said after a moment.
He wondered if it was only her misery which clawed at him, or if she was always such a harpy. He said with great care: "Well, in theory any of us could be guilty. I might have done it because Bruce was—going around with a girl I used to know. Or Guido here—jealousy? A quarrel? I assume we have merely his word he was out of town on Saturday and Sunday. Shall we also ask the police to check every minute of his weekend?"
The man in the doorway flushed. "Dig that," he said slowly. "So you're going to—"
"Nothing of the sort," rapped Kintyre. "I was trying to show how a private suspicion is no grounds for—"
Guido took a long drag on his cigarette, snuffed it in a horrible souvenir ashtray, and left without a word. They heard his footfalls go down the stairs.
"I am so sorry, Mister Professor," faltered Lombardi.
"Niente affatto, signor." Kintyre stood up. "All of you are worn out." He essayed a smile at Corinna. "You were echoing some of my own principles. We pessimists ought to stick together."