Perren Gebert said to no one, “And half a bottle gone.” Mrs. Frost, sitting with her lips tight and patient, glanced at him. I leaned forward to get closer to Dudley Frost and practically yelled at him:
“What is it? Where does it hurt?”
He jerked back and glared at me. “Where does what hurt?”
I grinned. “Nothing. I just wanted to see if you could hear. I gather you would just as soon I’d go. The best way to manage that, for all of you, is to let me ask a few foolish questions, and you answer them briefly and maybe honestly.”
“We’ve already answered them. All the foolish questions there are. We’ve been doing that all day. All because that nincompoop McNair—”
“Okay. I’ve already got it down that he was a nincompoop. You’ve made remarks about suicide. What reason did McNair have for killing himself?”
“How the devil do I know?”
“Then you can’t think one up offhand?”
“I don’t have to think one up. The man was crazy. I’ve always said so. I said so over twenty years ago, in Paris, when he used to paint rows of eggs strung on wires and call it The Cosmos.”
Helen started to burst, “Uncle Boyd was never—” She was seated at my right, and I reached and tapped her sleeve with the tips of my fingers and told her, “Swallow it. You can’t crack every nut in the bag.” I turned to Perren Gebert: