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so easily. From Devoted Husband to Ardent Lover in nothing flat, and back again. He said he loved Kaye and I believed him. And I believed he loved Sheila.
    “Let’s try another angle,” I suggested. “I know you don’t want to hash over it. But let’s so back to the apartment. Yesterday, when you found the body.”
    “She was dead.” His voice was empty. “That’s all . . . she was dead.”
    “I mean——”
    A long sigh. “I know what you mean. Hell, what’s the point? You saw everything I saw. You were there, weren’t you? What more is there to say?”
    “We saw it through different eyes. You may have caught something that I missed.”
    “I don’t think so. I didn’t see much of anything, Ed. Just her, dead. Everything was a mess and she was in the middle of it. I looked at the apartment and wondered what cyclone had hit it. I looked at her and I felt sick. I ran like a bat out of hell and went straight to you and . . . what’s the matter?”
    “The apartment,” I snapped at him. “You said it was messy.”
    He looked at me strangely. “Sure,” he said. “Hell, you saw it. Chairs knocked over, papers all over the floor—either she put up a fight or the bastard who killed her turned the place upside-down. You must have . . . what’s wrong? Why are you staring like that?”

FOUR

    I TOLD him why I was staring at him. I told him just how the apartment had looked, just how neat it had been. I watched him while I talked. His eyes were open wide and his mouth was open wider. My description of neatness was as jarring to him as his talk of disorder was to me.
    “God,” he said finally. “Then you didn’t strip her.”
    I just looked at him.
    “In the papers,” he said. “I read that she was . . . half-naked when they found her. I thought you stripped her to keep them from identifying her from her clothes.”
    “I didn’t have to. She wasn’t wearing any.”
    He shook his head. “She was fully dressed when I found her, Ed. A sweater and a skirt, I think. I don’t remember too well, my mind was swimming all over the place. But I would have remembered if she had been naked, wouldn’t I?”
    “It’s a hard sight to forget.”
    “That’s what I mean. When I read the paper . . . but I couldn’t believe you stripped her, not really. I didn’t think you would do something like that. It’s sort of sacrilegious, taking the clothes from a dead body.” He paused for breath. “Then I thought some sex fiend found her in the park before the police got there. Or that the papers were trying to make livelier copy out of it. Hell, I wasn’t sure what to think. But if she was nude when you found her——”
    I finished the sentence for him. “Then somebody got there after you left and before I arrived. That’s what happened. Some clown cleaned her apartment from floor to ceiling, took off her clothes and sneaked off into the night.”
    “But why?”
    I couldn’t answer that one.
    “It’s senseless,” he exploded. “Nothing makes any sense. Killing Sheila didn’t make any sense and neither does any of the rest of it. It’s crazy.”
    He looked ready to blow up. I said: “Physician, heal thyself,” and pointed to the bottle of Courvoisier. He poured us each a shot of brandy and we drank it.
    I got out of there as fast as I could, but first I made him give me the only picture he had of the dead girl. I wanted to show it to Maddy. I put it in my wallet, said something cheerful to him, and left him to his patients.
    The sallow little man peered myopically at me over his ‘New Yorker,’ the expectant mother put her magazine on her ample belly, and all of them looked happy as hell to see me. I said good-bye to the starched receptionist and walked out of the building.
    The sun was shining and the air was clear and clean enough to breathe. I filled my lungs and headed for home. It was walking weather and I was glad—I was sick of sitting around waiting for things to happen. The walk gave me