“Didn’t you object?” Sanders looked at him with interest. He seemed to take his wife’s infidelity with extraordinary detachment.

“It’s hard to explain, but I was finishing up my course work for my doctorate and getting preliminary materials for my dissertation. I had just landed Griffiths as a supervisor, and between the lab and the library I was working at least twelve hours a day. Jane was so bitchy whenever I saw her I began to avoid her as much as possible. Christ, I didn’t have the energy left over to cope with her soul-searching. I don’t know what it was about Jane—she just whined on and on about life being unfair, and she never got off her ass and did anything about it. The only thing she was good at was attracting men. I think that was the only thing she really enjoyed. Not that she liked them much after she got them, though. You’d see some poor bastard she had hooked on Friday come bouncing up to her at a party on Saturday and get brushed off like so much dandruff.” He chuckled.

“Did you make any attempt to get her back after she left?”

“Are you kidding? That was such a load off my mind. I felt so guilty about her, as if all her bitching and whining and misery was my responsibility, that when I read her letter I dashed back down to the lab and collected everyone I could find and dragged them off for a drink. Including Karen, whom I dragged off for the weekend on Friday. That’s the girl I was talking about.” He leaned back again. “And that’s about it.”

“Have you seen her much since the separation?”

Conway shook his head. “Hardly at all. I called her a couple of times about her stuff, and I gave her a hand packing it up and taking it over to her new apartment, that’s all. I was going to get in touch with her this month about divorce proceedings, but I hadn’t got around to it yet.”

“Did you think she’d give you a hard time?” Sanders cocked his head to one side.

“Nope. With no kids, no assets, and her walking out on me, there’s absolutely no way she could hold things up.”

“Her apartment is in a fairly expensive area of the city, I notice. Were you contributing to her maintenance?”

“Me?” Conway stared at him in amazement. “I’m living on a grant in low-cost housing. She was healthy and able to work and walked out on me. Even Jane didn’t have the nerve to ask me for money.”

“Was she getting money from her family, then? To help her along?” Sanders asked.

“I doubt that. She didn’t have much family. Her parents are both dead, and her nearest relation is her Uncle Matt; he owns a small farm. I don’t imagine he could spare much cash for anyone. No. Jane was always poor as a kid, I gathered.” Conway’s eyes were bright with curiosity.

“Did your wife ever think of staying at home and having a family? Since she didn’t seem to like working?”

Conway laughed. “Jane was absolutely horrified at the idea of children. She wanted to have her tubes tied, except that it involved an operation, and she was even more terrified of doctors and knives than of ruining her lovely body with a baby.” For the first time, a tinge of bitterness flavoured his speech.

Sanders gave him another measured glance. Dubinsky, pen in hand, interposed. “Could you give us the name and address of this Uncle Matt? If he’s Mrs. Conway’s next of kin?”

“Well, his name is Jameson, Matt Jameson, and I don’t know his address—just ‘Cobourg’ might reach him. Anyway, his address should be in Jane’s book.”

“Her book?” asked Dubinsky,

“That little green three-ring binder in her purse. She carried it with her always. The front half is a diary/appointment book, and the back half is addresses and phone numbers. You must have found it.” Sanders nodded noncommittally. “He’ll be in it, and all her friends, and, I suspect, all the guys she was going out with.”

“Do you know who she was seeing recently?”

“The last ones I knew about were Grant Keswick—he’s an actor of some kind—and a Mike somebody from Cobourg who she knew in high school.” He shrugged his shoulders to plead ignorance. “If you want more information about her, you could always try Marny. When Jane took a year off after university and went to Europe, she worked with Marny after she got back, and they were great pals. I couldn’t stand her—not my type.”

“Does Marny have another name?”

“No doubt, but if I ever knew, I forgot it as fast as I could.” He tossed this off cheerfully. “She might still work for Pronto Secretarial Services, though. She was office manager last I heard of her. They should know where she is.”

As Sanders and Dubinsky rose to leave, Conway looked at them curiously. “If you don’t mind my asking, why did you want all that information about Jane? I mean, except for her uncle’s name—I can see you needing that. The papers seemed pretty clear that she had been killed by some rapist—the guy who did in those other girls.”

“Oh well,” said Sanders vaguely, “we still have to look round a bit, just in case someone took it into his head to try to get rid of her and push the blame off on someone else.” He stood up to leave. “By the way, what’s your blood type?”

“O positive,” said Conway. “And the estranged husband is the first person you look at, isn’t he? Well, I can’t exactly mourn her, but I never would have killed her, or even wished this end on her. And you can believe that or not, as you like. Do you want my alibi?”

“It may come to that some day, Mr. Conway. Let’s not worry about it for now.”

Sanders and Dubinsky emerged into sunshine and Sanders looked around him at the slowly greening campus. “Pretty cool type, isn’t he?” he asked. “A true scientist—you know, the detached observer, and all that crap.”

“He stinks,” said Dubinsky. “Where are we going?”

“To Pronto Secretarial Services. We’ll see if the mysterious Marny likes him as much as he likes her.”

Sanders stopped and scanned the list of occupants in the smallish red-brick building on St. Clair Avenue East. There it was: Pronto Secretarial Services. Room 201. He looked quickly at his watch and headed in the door. It had taken Dubinsky at least five minutes to find even an illegal parking space this close to five o’clock on a Friday afternoon. That woman had better not have left yet. Streams of people were already pouring out of the doors and elevators; there was no time to wait around. He dashed up the stairs, two at a time, followed by a heavily perspiring Dubinsky. Room 201 contained a pleasant reception room and a severely elegant blonde who was engaged at the moment in putting on her coat. She gave them a distinctly chilly smile and an almost inaudible, “May I help you?”

“I’m looking for your office manager—uh, Marny—” he paused, hoping for some help.

It was obviously the sort of remark the receptionist would have expected from someone crude enough to arrive at 4:59 on a Friday. “I’ll ask Miss Huber if she can see you. Your name?” He handed her his card. It did not impress her. She handed it back and muttered swiftly into the phone. “If you would care to sit down, miss”—the stress on the “Miss” was exquisitely calculated—“Huber will be out in a moment.” She finished putting on her coat, reached under her desk for a small, tasteful red purse, and flashed by them, in small, tasteful red shoes that were carefully contrived to set off the otherwise purely black and white perfection of her clothing.

Miss Huber emerged almost as soon as the blonde vision had cleared the door. If Sanders had been subconsciously expecting a further manifestation of blonde ice, he was pleasantly surprised. She was on the tall side of average and robust-looking, with olive skin and a thick cap of black hair that swung down around her ears. She had a slightly Slavic cast to her features, and at that moment her mouth was set in a rather ferocious expression. Cop-hater, thought Sanders. Nothing you can do about it.