“I’d like to make up for some of that silence.”
“In a little while. But there’s something I want to say now — quite a few things, in fact.”
“I’m listening.”
She took a deep breath. “When I first heard, on the radio, of Helen’s — death, there were no details at all. But I felt — instinctively, I knew, that you’d done it.”
“What!” He had expected almost anything, but he was not prepared for quite such a stunning blow.
“Please,” she said. “I caught the first plane I could, thinking you’d be in jail when I got here. I wanted to let you know that I was on your side — that I’d be a character witness, or whatever you call it. I mean, I could have told what Helen was really like, and what justification you had. It wasn’t that I hated Helen — it’s just that there was something all wrong with her, and since Mama’s gone, I’m the only one who could have helped you.”
“Go on,” Conway said, his throat dry.
“Then when I got here and saw the papers at the airport, and read that you weren’t being held, I had to think that maybe I was wrong. That’s when I started getting confused, because I didn’t believe that sex-maniac thing for a minute.”
“You don’t know Los Angeles.”
“Maybe not. But I do know that that kind of thing just never happens to people like Helen.”