His place was set at the dining-room table, and the coffee pot was simmering on the stove. He poured a cup, drank it black, and poured another which he took back to the table with him. Betty was nowhere to be seen; he assumed that she had already eaten and gone to her room. He started on the papers and the grapefruit which were at his place, simultaneously.
The case was still on the front pages, but it was down to one column, consisting of a reworking of the facts, conjectures and surmises which had been printed yesterday. The only added information was the disclosure that no sex crime had been committed; both papers, with an unmistakable air of disappointment, concluded that the murderer must be merely a homicidal maniac. It was only a matter of time, Conway reflected gratefully, until, as Bauer had predicted, something else, newer, more sensational, would come along to push the murder of Helen Conway off the front pages, and into the already crowded oblivion of unsolved crimes.
The final paragraph of one story caught his eye: “Captain Ramsden referred newsmen to Detective Sergeant Bauer for further developments in the case, explaining that Sergeant Bauer had been put in full charge.” The sergeant is not so dumb, Conway thought, and then amended, about some things.
“I didn’t hear you come down — I’d have gotten your coffee.” The voice came from outside; he looked on to the patio and saw Betty’s head peering over the back of the settee on which she had been lying in the sun, out of sight. She stood up, and Conway’s hangover was dissipated by a new and more dizzying intoxication.
She was wearing shorts and a bra: the shorts were very short and the bra was extensive enough, perhaps, to ward off arrest. All that had been promised by the dress she had worn yesterday was now ravishingly fulfilled. Conway was reminded of the pin-up girls who had been the major hobby of a good many GI’s; here before him was the first one he had ever seen in the flesh. The vision came toward him, and with something like horror he remembered that last night he had actually thought of destroying this loveliness.
She stood in the doorway and indicated the paper he still held in his hand. “The story doesn’t seem to rate as much attention this morning,” she said.
The spell was broken. For a few moments he had been conscious only of the sheer pleasure he was deriving from her beauty. Her words brought back a realization of the threat she represented. He turned back to his breakfast, and his voice was noncommittal when he spoke.
“Bauer said it would die down pretty quickly,” he said.
“Do you think they’ll find the—” She hesitated, and Conway wondered why she stuck on the word. “—the one who killed her?” she finished.
“I doubt it. Bauer’s said from the first there was practically no chance.”