‘Tell me what you did after you killed her, right up until the time you came here.’
‘Not much,’ I said. ‘It was only last night. I took her cheque-book. I went back to my room, sort of numb. I put all my clothes on except my shoes. I carried them. I went out. Walked a long time, trying to think, went to the bank when it opened. Cashed a cheque for eleven hundred bucks. Got the idea of getting some help from a psychiatrist, spent most of the day looking for one, came here. That’s all.’
‘Didn’t you have any trouble cashing the cheque?’
‘I never have any trouble making people do what I want them to do.’
He gave a surprised grunt.
‘I know what you’re thinking—I couldn’t make Miss Kew do what I wanted.’
‘That’s part of it,’ he admitted.
‘If I had of done that,’ I told him, ‘she wouldn’t of been Miss Kew any more. Now the banker—all I made him do was be a banker.’
I looked at him and suddenly realized why he fooled with the pipe all the time. It was so he could look down at it and you wouldn’t be able to see his eyes.
‘You killed her,’ he said—and I knew he was changing the subject—‘and destroyed something that was valuable to you. It must have been less valuable to you than the chance to rebuild this thing you used to have with the other kids. And you’re not sure of the value of that.’ He looked up. ‘Does that describe your main trouble?’