The detective lowered his voice. “Where is she?”
“Went out a couple of hours ago. Said she’d be back for her things when she found a place. I think she meant it.”
“Good — that’s great.” The detective’s satisfaction seemed somewhat overdone to Conway. “Say, while I think of it,” Bauer continued, “the other day when you were down at Headquarters, Sherlock Ramsden must of been thinking so hard about those reporters that he didn’t find out hardly anything from you.”
“I told him everything I knew,” Conway protested.
“I’m not blaming you. You told him everything he asked you, but he only asked about that night. Well, I’ve checked all that and got nowhere, so now I got to start earlier. What about the day before? Sunday, that was.”
“I worked all day, and Helen was at home.” That was easy — it happened to be true. The next he had to take a chance on, for he had no idea whether Helen had gone out after he had left the house. “We’d planned to go out to dinner, but she had a headache, and only wanted some soup, so I made it for her, and she went to bed. I’d been in the house all day and wanted a little fresh air, so I took a drive down to the beach, sat there for a while and thought about a story I was writing, and came home.”
“Um-m,” said Bauer. “What about Monday?”
Conway recounted the day in detail. They had been together all day, except when he had been in his room in the morning, writing letters. They had had lunch, and she had wanted to do some shopping; he had bought a paper and read in the car while he waited for her. He had a sudden thought.
“I remember something now,” he said. “She bought a pair of gloves, and when she came back to the car she said, ‘I’ve finally got two pairs of white gloves. Now I won’t have to wash a pair every time I take them off.’ “ Conway managed to suppress the smile of triumph which he felt.
“Then she had another pair besides the ones she was wearing that night?” The satisfaction was replaced by a surge of anger as Conway realized the detective had not even noticed the pristine gloves in the drawer yesterday.