husband.”
Sitting in a chair across the coffee table from him in Suite 12, her expression changed little. Perhaps her eyes grew a little wider.
“And,” Fletch said, “I think I do understand.”
He had appeared at her door, carrying the marvelous machine.
She had answered the door, still dressed in black, having returned from the memorial service shortly before. Near the door was a luncheon tray waiting to be taken away.
At first, she looked at him in surprise, as it was an unseemly time to call. Then she obviously remembered he had promised they would talk again about his working for March Newspapers. And the suitcase in his hand suggested he was about to leave.
He said nothing.
Sitting on the divan, he placed the marvelous machine flat on the coffee table.
Now he was opening it.
“Statistically, of course,” he said, “in the case of a domestic murder—and this is a domestic murder—when a husband or wife is murdered, chances of the spouse being the murderer are something over seventy percent.”
Perhaps her eyes widened again when she saw that what was in the suitcase was a tape recorder.
“Which is why,” Fletch said, “you chose to murder your husband here at the convention, where you knew your husband would be surrounded by people who had reason to hate him to the point of murder.”
Her back was straight Her hands were folded in her lap.
“Listen to this.”
Fletch started the tape recorder.
It was the tape of Lydia March being questioned by Captain Neale, edited:
“At what time did you wake up, Mrs. March?”
“I’m not sure. Seven-fifteen? Seven-twenty? I heard the door to the suite close.”
“That was me, Mister Neale,” Junior said. “I went down to the lobby to get the newspapers.”
“Walter had left his bed. It’s always been a thing with him to be up a little earlier than I. A masculine thing. I heard him moving around the bathroom. I lay in bed a little while, a few minutes, really, waiting for him to be done.”
“The bathroom door was closed?”
“Yes. In a moment I heard the television here in the living room go on, softly—one of those morning news and features network shows Walter always hated so much—so I got up and went into the bathroom.”
“Excuse me. How did your husband get from the bathroom to the living room without coming back through your bedroom?”
“He went through Junior’s bedroom, of course. He didn’t want to disturb me?.”
“… Okay. You were in the bathroom. The television was playing softly in the living room.…”
“I heard the door to the suite close again, so I thought Walter had gone down for coffee.”
“Had the television gone off?”
“No.”
“So, actually, someone could have come into the suite at that point.”
“No. At first, I thought Junior might have come back, but he couldn’t have.”
“Why not?”
“I didn’t hear them talking.”
“Would they have been talking? Necessarily?”
“Of course.…”
“So, Mrs. March, you think you heard the suite door close again, but your husband hadn’t left the suite, and you think no one entered the suite because you didn’t hear talking?”
“I guess that’s right I could be mistaken, of course. I’m trying to reconstruct.”
“Pardon, but where were you physically in the bathroom when you heard the door close the second time?”
“I was getting into the tub.…”
“… You had already run the tub?”
“Yes. While I was brushing my teeth. And all that.”
“So there must have been a period of time, while the tub was running, that you couldn’t have heard anything from the living room—not the front door, not the television, not talking?”
“I suppose not.”
“So the second time you heard the door close, when you were getting into the tub, you actually could have been hearing someone leave the suite.”
“Oh, my. That’s right Of course.”
“It would explain your son’s not having returned, your husband’s not having left, and your not hearing talking.”
“How clever you are….”
Fletch switched off the marvelous machine.
Listening, Lydia March’s eyes had gone back and forth from the slowly revolving tape reel to Fletch’s face.
Fletch said, “When I first arrived at Hendricks Plantation, and Helena Williams was telling me about the murder, I noticed she particularly mentioned what you had heard from the bathroom. I think she said something about your hearing gurgling and thinking it was the tub drain. Not precisely what you said here. But Helena could have reported what you heard from the bathroom only if you had made a point of telling her.”
Fletch rested his back against a divan pillow.
“Captain Neale wasn’t a bit clever,” he said. “He never went into the bathroom to discover what