I meant he'd most likely confess at the police station, not in front of the lot of us. But a shadow passed over his face right about then and I decided to shut up for a minute and give him room. Or rope, if you like.

His lip quivered. Then a muscle worked in his temple. "I didn't mean to kill her," he said.

I looked at Ray and Ray looked at me, and a smile blossomed on Ray's lips.

"I hit her once. It was an accident, really. She was railing at me, nagging me. She could be such a shrew. She'd married me for my money, of course. That was no secret. But now that money was tight-" He sighed. "I swung at her. I could never have done that if the dog had been around. The bitch would have taken my arm off. I swung and she fell and she must have hit her head on something when she reached the floor."

It was nice embroidery. I'd seen those pictures, and the woman had been systematically beaten to death, but let Colcannon put the best face on it for the time being. This was the opening wedge. Later on they'd crack him like a coconut.

"Then I tried to find her pulse and she was dead," he went on, "and I thought that my life was over, too, and then I thought, well, let the burglars take the blame for this one. So I tied her up and I struck myself over the head, it was hard to make myself do that hard enough to inflict damage but I steeled myself, and then after I'd set the stage I called the police. I thought they'd question me and break me down, but they took one look around and knew the house had been looted by burglars, and that evidently satisfied them."

Ray rolled his eyes at the ceiling. Some members of the department, I suspected, were going to hear about this one.

"But I never killed Abel Crowe!" Colcannon was bristling suddenly with righteous indignation. "That's what all this was supposed to be about, isn't it? The murder of a receiver of stolen goods? I never met Abel Crowe, I never even heard of Abel Crowe, and I certainly didn't kill him."

"No," I agreed. "You didn't."

"I didn't know he had my coin. I thought you had my coin."

"So you did."

"I thought you still had it. That's why I came here today in the first place, God damn it to hell. So how can you accuse me of killing Crowe?"

"I can't."

"But-"

I sent my eyes on a tour of my audience. I had their attention, all right. I looked straight at the murderer and saw nothing there but the same rapt interest that was evident on all their faces.

"I think you would have killed Abel," I told Colcannon, "if you had thought it would get you the coin back. For all I know you were planning to kill me this afternoon rather than pay me the twelve thousand dollars for the coin. But you didn't know he had the coin, and there was no way you could know."

"Unless Abel told him," Carolyn piped up. "Maybe Abel tried to sell the coin back to him."

I shook my head. "Not at that stage," I said. "He might have tried to work a deal with the insurance company, after the loss was reported. But it was too early for Abel to know that the loss wasn't covered by insurance, and far too early for him to think about selling the coin back to its presumptive owner.

"My first thought was that Abel had invited a prospective buyer to view the coin, and that he'd sufficiently misjudged the man's character to get murdered for his troubles. But was that the first thing Abel would do?"

I shook my head. "It wasn't," I answered myself. "Abel had just received a coin with a six-figure price tag. It had come from the hands of a thief who in turn had taken it from the house of a man who was not known to have possession of it. Before Abel did anything with the coin he had to determine whether or not it was genuine. Even though he could approach certainty by examining it closely, one doesn't take chances. Mr. Ruslander obtained the coin from a reputable museum, but even so he took the normal precaution of having it x-rayed to determine its authenticity, and Abel would do no less when dealing with a coin of doubtful provenance.

"Abel said at the time that such a determination was his first order of business. 'At a more favorable hour,' he said, he could verify the coin's legitimacy without leaving the building. I took this to mean that he could have an expert numismatist drop by to look at the coin and authenticate it, but experts of that sort don't habitually make house calls in the middle of the night.

"But that wasn't what he meant at all.

"He meant that there was someone in his building who could provide verification of the coin's bona fides. I thought there might be a numismatic expert in residence, and then I stopped to think about it and realized that Abel wouldn't want an expert to know that he had the coin. The 1913 V-Nickel's too rare and too celebrated, and the real experts in the coin field are highly ethical men who would balk at authenticating a stolen coin and being expected to keep quiet about it.

"No, what Abel required was not an opinion. He wanted an X ray."

I scanned my audience. The murderer remained quite expressionless, so much so that I almost doubted my conclusion. But not really. I glanced at Carolyn and saw her nodding intently. She had it figured now.

"Where do you go for an X ray? A lab? A hospital emergency room? A radiologist? You couldn't manage that without leaving Abel's building. A dentist? There's a dentist in the building, a Dr. Grieg. I believe he specializes in root canal work."

"He does," Mrs. Pomerance confirmed. "He doesn't hurt you, either, but he charges a fortune."

"They all charge a fortune," someone else said. "Grieg's no worse than the rest of them."

"Abel had false teeth," I said, "so I doubt he'd have needed Dr. Grieg's services, reasonable or otherwise. He might have become friendly with the man regardless and have used his X-ray equipment for examining rare coins and jewelry, but he wasn't a patient, and Abel doesn't seem to have developed intimate relationships with his neighbors.

"Anyway, Abel had a professional relationship with someone in the building who also had X-ray equipment. You see, Abel had trouble with his feet. I don't know if he had Morton's Foot or not, let alone chondromalacia, but he had bad feet and the weight he carried put an extra load on them. The shoes in his closet are all prescription items, with built-up arches and various oddities you can't buy in your friendly neighborhood Florsheims."

I looked at the murderer. His face was no longer expressionless. I saw something in his eyes that looked like alarm. The goatee and mustache kept me from seeing if he was keeping a stiff upper lip, but I tended to doubt it.

"Abel was a frequent patient of Murray Feinsinger's," I went on. "He must have been quite a contrast to all those runners and dancers, but his chart shows that he turned up in that office a great deal. He had an appointment the morning of the day he was killed."

"That's crazy!" Feinsinger was outraged. "He had no such appointment. He was my patient, it's true, and he was also my friend. That is why I am here at what I was told was to be a service for him, not an inquisition. He had no appointment with me on the day of his death."

"Funny. It's listed in your appointment book and on his chart." It hadn't been until early that morning, but why stress the point? "It wasn't the first time he used your X-ray equipment for nonpodiatric purposes, was it?"

Feinsinger shrugged. "Perhaps not. He would drop in occasionally and ask if he could use the machine. What did I care? He was a friend and a patient, so I let him use it. But he didn't come in that morning, or if he did I paid no attention. I certainly didn't kill him."

"Not then, no. You waited until your waiting room was clear during your lunch break. Then you went upstairs, and of course he let you in without a second thought. You asked for a look at the coin, and he showed it to you, and you killed him and took it."