“Taylor says she was going to divorce you and marry him.”
“What!”
“He says she was going to divorce you as soon as she got a little money — meaning, I suppose, as soon as you got a little money — which she expected to be soon.”
So Taylor knew about the money. And if he knew that, he probably knew all the rest — the quarrels, the threats, the letters... But the letters had never been sent; if Taylor thought he knew about them, he would be proved wrong. As for the rest, it was Taylor’s word against his, and the word of a husband would carry greater weight than that of a paramour.
“He’s lying,” Conway said. “I don’t believe any of it.”
“About that — maybe he is,” Ramsden admitted. “But not about the essentials. You don’t think he wanted to admit any of this, do you? He wasn’t anxious to get involved.”
“But why did he? I mean, how did you get him to admit — whatever he did?”
“She’s been going to see him for almost three months. The apartment superintendent identified her from her picture. When we told Mr. Taylor we knew that, the young man saw he was really in a jam, and started to talk.”
“A jam?” Conway’s head began to clear; somewhat incredulously he realized that the detectives’ suspicions were directed, not at himself, but at Taylor. “You mean you think he was the — that he had something to do with it?”
“That’d be a pretty good guess, wouldn’t it?”