“Isn’t there anything else you can tell me?” Conway asked. “No clues? Nothing?”
“Not yet. Time we get downtown, they might have something.”
“When did it happen? How long had she been—?” He stopped himself, remembering that, in fiction at least, the bereaved next of kin were always unable to utter the word “dead.”
“Don’t know yet.”
Conway turned and again stared out the window. So the police had not yet got to the couple who had been on the porch. Or perhaps Detective Larkin simply hadn’t been told about it. If the car had been found only an hour ago, there had been little time for investigation. He was chilled momentarily at the realization of how important that couple were to him: they were the crucial figures in his whole scheme, for it was they who had to establish when the car had been parked. And that, in turn, was what Conway counted on to prove — if it had to be proved — that the man who had parked the car could not have been himself. But he refused to be alarmed; he enjoyed the sense of relief that the waiting was over.
The session at the Morgue was mercifully brief. He steeled himself before they went in; someone lifted the cloth which covered her face, he nodded, and then they were in an office. He signed some forms, and they went out to the street and got into the car.
“We’ll go over to Headquarters now,” Larkin said. “They’ll want to get all the information you can give ’em.”
Conway was inwardly, as well as outwardly, calm when they went through the door lettered HOMICIDE BUREAU. He was ushered into a private office, and there Larkin introduced him, quite formally, to two plainclothesmen, a lieutenant in uniform, and Captain Ramsden, Chief of the Homicide Bureau. Almost immediately the door opened and a youngish man, who looked like a salesman and a none too successful one, entered.
“This is Mr. Conway, Sergeant Bauer,” Ramsden said. Bauer acknowledged the introduction, took a small notebook from his pocket, and sat down at the side of the captain’s desk.
They asked Conway to tell everything that had happened from the time Helen and he had left the house to go to the movie, and he did. The story was not too pat; he would skip some detail, then remember it a little later, and fit it in chronologically. He was not too accurate about times; he knew they could, and would, check those later. He made it very clear that their marital life was completely happy. He gave the names of their few acquaintances and friends; he knew of no enemies. They asked further questions about parts of his account, and he repeated or enlarged on what he had already told them.