Marvell said: “You didn’t tell me she was murdered. You permitted me to think it was an accident.” He sounded badly shaken. His yellow hair was wet, but the water that glistened on his forehead came from his own pores.

“They’re no deader when they’re murdered. In any case, we don’t know if she was.”

“Murder is such a perfectly dreadful thought.” His blurred gaze wandered around the room and skipped past me. “It was bad enough when I found the poor woman’s body. Now I simply know I shan’t sleep a wink tonight.”

“Take it easy, Mr. Marvell. You did exactly the right thing and you should be feeling more than satisfied with yourself.” Knudson’s rippling bass was gentle and bland. “One thing I don’t quite understand, though, and that is why you decided to take a swim all by yourself after dark.”

“I don’t entirely understand it myself,” Marvell answered slowly. “It was one of those half-conscious motivations, I believe. I’d just stepped outside for a bit to smell the jasmine, and I was strolling in the loggia, when I thought I heard a splash from the swimming-pool. It had no sinister connotations, you know, nothing like that; I must have thought that someone else was taking a dip, and I decided to join them. I’m always one for fun and games, you see—”

“I see.”

“Well, first I went down to the pool to see who it was—”

“Right after you heard the splash?”

“No, not immediately. It took a little while for the idea to grow on me—”

“And meanwhile the splashing continued?”

“I believe it did. Yes, I think it must have. By the time I got down there, however—it’s quite a piece from the house—”

“Nearly a hundred yards. By the time you got down there?”

“It was perfectly silent again, and perfectly dark. Naturally I was a little surprised to find that the lights weren’t on. I stood by the pool for a moment, wondering what had happened, and then I made out this round dark object. It was a large straw hat floating upside down in the water, and when I realized that I became alarmed. I switched on the underwater lights, and saw her. She was lying face down at the bottom of the pool, her hair swirling round her head, her skirt billowing, her arms spread out. It was ghastly.” The water from his pores had made bright marks along his cheeks and formed a single clear droplet at the point of his chin. He brushed it away with the back of a nervous hand.

“Then you went in after her,” Knudson stated.

“Yes. I took off my clothes, all but my underthings, and brought her to the surface. I found I couldn’t raise her onto the side, so I pulled her to the shallow end and got her out there. She was terribly hard to handle. I’d thought that dead people were stiff, but she seemed loose all over. Like soft rubber.” A second droplet formed.

“It was then that you raised the alarm?”

“Yes. I should have done before, but all I could think of was to get that poor dear woman out of the cold water.”

“You did just fine, Mr. Marvell. A minute or two didn’t make any difference, anyway. Now I want you to think carefully before you answer this: how much time elapsed between the initial splash and the alarm? It was twenty to nine when you called for help. You see, I’m trying to fix the time of death.”

“I understand that. It’s very hard to say how long it was, impossible in fact. I was lost in the beauty of the night, you know, and I wasn’t consciously taking note of time, or of what I heard. It might have been ten minutes, or it might have been twenty, I really couldn’t say.”

“Well, think about it some more, and let me know if you can set it more definitely. You’re perfectly certain, by the way, that you didn’t see anybody else at all at the pool, or while you were back of the house?”

“As certain as I can be, yes. Now if you’ll excuse me—”

“Of course. And thank you.”

Marvell left the room in a nervous sidewise movement, stroking his hair with his hand.

“Jesus,” Knudson said as he stood up. “He never saw a stiff before, let alone touched one, and it hit him in the middle. It takes guts to dive for a cadaver at night, though. You get all of that, Eddie?”

“All but the gestures.” The man in uniform stroked himself elaborately from hairline to nape.

“Okay, take a little walk while I talk to Archer here.” He crossed the room and stood above me with fists on hips until the door had closed. I put some caviar on a cracker and ate it daintily, in two bites.

“Have some?”

He didn’t answer that. “Just who the hell are you, anyway?”

I took out my wallet and showed him the photostat of my license. “Now ask me what the hell I’m doing here. Unfortunately my chronic aphasia has taken a bad turn for the worse. It always goes like that when a dumb cop takes a shot at me.”

He wagged his studded head good-humoredly. “Forget Franks, eh? I can’t help it if he’s a ward-heeler in the Mayor’s party, and the Mayor is ex officio on the Police Commission. Can I?”

“You could put him on a desk, or issue him blanks.”

“Yeah. You’re a fast talker, Archer, but you needn’t get your back up. Maude Slocum told me about you.”

“How much?”

“Enough. The less said about that the better. Right?” His mind was quick and cold, out of place in his big, full-blooded body. I could almost see it turning a leaf and writing a new heading at the top of a clean page. “So far as she knew, you were the last one to talk to the old lady before she died. Exactly when did you see her?”

“Just before sunset. That would be a few minutes after seven.”

“A couple of minutes before. It’s earlier here on account of the mountains. You talked to her in the garden, I believe? If you’ll tell me now exactly what was said—” He went to the door and called his shorthand writer, who took his position at the kitchen table. I told him what was said.

“Nothing much there, eh?” He sounded disappointed. “No sign of suicidal impulse? Or illness? She had a pretty bad heart, the doctor says.”

“Nothing that I could put my finger on. She seemed a little screwy to me, but nearly everyone does. What’s the physical evidence?”

“Everything external points to drowning. That’s the presumption, anyway, when you find a corpse in water—though how the hell she got there I can’t say. About the body, we’ll know more tomorrow. The Coroner’s ordering an autopsy and an inquest.”

“What’s the assumption in the meantime? Fell, or got pushed?”

“Fell, but I’m handling it as homicide until I know for sure. Old ladies do fall into swimming-pools, I guess.”

“She wasn’t old.”

“I know. And there’s no good reason why she should go near the pool, let alone into it. She never used it. It was built for her husband’s arthritis years ago. She was forbidden the water, on account of her heart, and she was afraid of it, anyway.”

“Not without reason.”

“No.” His thick, square-nailed fingers drummed on the hard tabletop. “I tried a reconstruction from the condition of the lawn around the pool. The trouble was, when Marvell yelled for help, everybody came running. They trampled out any traces there might have been.”

“One thing, if it’s murder, you’ll have most of your suspects accounted for. The people at the party.”

“It’s not that simple.” To the man with the notebook he said: “Don’t bother with this,” and turned back to me: “They had a buffet lunch in the dining-room, and at the time it happened the guests were moving in and out. Even Marvell could have pushed her in, then fished her out himself.”

“Why pick on Marvell?”

“Figure it out. He wants money to take his play east. He’s very close to Slocum. Now Slocum has money.”

“You’re skipping Slocum, aren’t you?”

His face twisted sourly. “James is a mother’s boy. He wouldn’t touch a hair of his mother’s head.”

“And Maude Slocum?”

“I’m skipping her, too.” His mind flicked another page, and started a new heading: “Assuming she was murdered, there’s a possibility it was an outside job. A woman like that makes a lot of enemies.”