“Oh! No!” She clasped her hands pathetically. “I did not. I never did.”
“You meant Lanerd?”
She made a little strangling noise in her throat; her shoulders shook.
“If that’s what was in your mind, you’ll have some explaining to do, now Lanerd’s dead.”
For the time it took our cab to go half a block I thought she hadn’t heard me.
Then she whispered, “Dow? Not Dow!”
I nodded.
Barely audible: “I don’t believe it.”
“He’s at the hotel. I suppose they’ll let you see him.” I tried to make it matter-of-fact.
She whimpered as if I’d struck her. “You’re being cruel. To frighten me.”