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have many closed subjects?”
    “Quite a few. She didn’t like to go into the past, or talk about herself. She had a rocky childhood. Her parents were always quarreling over her, and it left its mark on Phoebe.”
    “In what way?”
    “Well, she didn’t know if she wanted to have any children, for one thing. She didn’t know if she’d make a fit mother.”
    “You talked about having children?”
    “Of course. We were going to get married.”
    “When?”
    He hesitated, and glanced up at the hanging bulb. The light held his eyes. “This year, after we graduated. I was going on to graduate school. It would have worked out, too.” He pulled his eyes down from the hypnotic bulb. “I don’t know what I’m going to do now.”
    “It’s strange your mother didn’t mention this. Does she know about your marriage plans?”
    “She ought to. We argued about it enough. She thought I was too young to think about getting married. And she didn’t understand Phoebe, or like her.”
    “Why?”
    A wry, sideways smile made his mouth ugly. “Mother probably would have felt that way about any girl that I was interested in. Anyway, she’s always hated people with money.”
    “But you don’t.”
    “It makes no difference to me, one way or the other. I can make my own way, I’m an all-A student. At least I was until this semester, and I still have a couple of weeks to pull it out.”
    “What happened this semester?”
    “You know what happened.” He looked down at Phoebe’s abandoned belongings, green eyes half-shut, lower lip thrust out. He shook his head tautly. “Let’s get out of here.”
    “This is as good a place to talk as any.”
    “I don’t want to talk any more. I’m getting pretty sick of your insinuations. You keep hinting that I’m lying.”
    “I think you’re holding back on me, Bobby—suppressing some of the facts. I want them all.”
    “We can’t stand here all day.”
    “Sit down then.”
    He didn’t move. “What else do you want to know?”
    I picked a fairly neutral subject. “How was she doing in school?”
    “Pretty well. She knocked off mostly B’s at the mid-terms. She was majoring in French, and she has a knack for languages. She told me she was doing a lot better than last year at Stanford—didn’t have so many emotional problems.”
    The wry and ugly smile took hold of his mouth again. He straightened it out, but it left the impression that he was mocking himself.
    “What about her emotional problems?” I was wondering about his.
    He shrugged his muscle-packed shoulders, awkwardly. “I’m no psychiatrist. But anybody could see that she had her moods. She was up one day and down the next. I thought she ought to go to a psychiatrist. She told me she’d tried that.”
    “When?”
    “Last spring in Palo Alto. She didn’t give it much of a try, though. She only saw the doctor a couple of times.”
    “What was his name?”
    “I wouldn’t know. Her aunt might be able to tell you. Mrs. Trevor. She lives on the Peninsula near Palo Alto.”
    “Do you know the Trevors?”
    “No.”
    “Or the rest of the family?”
    “No.”
    “How long have you known Phoebe?”
    He thought about his answer. “Just since she came here, in September. About two months altogether. Less than two months.”
    “In less than two months you decided to get married?”
    “I decided right away. Something clicked,” he said, “the first time I saw her.”
    “When was that?”
    “In September. She came to look at the apartment. I was painting the kitchenette.”
    “I understood you met her before that.”
    “You understood wrong.”
    “You didn’t meet her at a beach last summer, and talk her into coming to college here?”
    He went into deep thought, which left his face inert and his eyes blind. I thought for an instant that this case was going to be short and successful and bitter: the girl dead, killed by the boy, who was getting ready to crack.
    “Yeah,” he said painfully. “As a