‘Just about.’
‘You know the single thing that makes people kill?’ When I didn’t answer, he said, ‘Survival. To save the self or something which identifies with the self. And in this case that doesn’t apply, because your setup with Miss Kew had far more survival value for you, singly and as a group, than the other.’
‘So maybe I just didn’t have a good enough reason to kill her.’
‘You had, because you did it. We just haven’t located it yet. I mean we have the reason, but we don’t know why it was important enough. The answer is somewhere in you.’
‘Where?’
He got up and walked some. ‘We have a pretty consecutive life-story here. There’s fantasy mixed with the fact, of course, and there are areas in which we have no detailed information, but we have a beginning and a middle and an end. Now I can’t say for sure, but the answer may be in that bridge you refused to cross a while back. Remember?’
I remembered all right. I said, ‘Why that? Why can’t we try something else?’
He quietly pointed out, ‘Because you just said it. Why are you shying away from it?’
‘Don’t go making big ones out of little ones,’ I said. Sometimes the guy annoyed me. ‘That bothers me. I don’t know why, but it does.’
‘Something’s lying hidden in there and you’re bothering it so it’s fighting back. Anything that fights to stay concealed is very possibly the thing we’re after. Your trouble is concealed, isn’t it?’