“I didn’t go near the courthouse. It would be a mistake to see any of the official records before knowing what made the patrolmen call their superiors. We don’t want to work in the dark. If you think Wendell is being evasive you won’t believe what these people are capable of. You said that the wallet was returned intact, but you can see now that maybe it wasn’t. We’d better go through it again on the chance of finding something that you wouldn’t recognize the first time.

“We didn’t get a break from the track employees. They mishandled evidence, disturbing the things on the roof. In spite of what the guard heard and saw, there could have been another man up there, back from the edge and out of sight. He could have made his way on the roof to the emergency door at the back of the press box on top of the clubhouse. If he had run fast enough, he could have made it through while the sixth race was coming down to the finish. In that way he would have been unobserved. For the same reason, and one other, I don’t think that there could have been more than one man. Two or three would have been seen or heard as they took the two steps from the press box door to the stairs to the clubhouse, even at the conclusion of a race. The other reason is that I’m certain your husband would not have stepped onto the roof if he had seen more than one man up there. His view from the top of the ladder was unobstructed. I don’t think he could have been forced by two or more men to ascend the ladder—that would have been noticed. One man, if any. We may never know if the stupidity of the track security men helped him get away with murder.

“There was no robbery, we know that, but by the account of the way his things were found, there could have been a struggle. At the banks, there was no evidence of withdrawals for blackmail payments. There is the possibility that someone contacted him for the purpose of blackmail and that the first meeting, the one up there, went wrong.” Leland took the chance to light a cigarette. He was not going to state the other, stronger, alternative: that her husband, unencumbered by shoes and the items in his pocket, had waited for a would-be blackmailer with the intention of killing him. Leland had no evidence; it just seemed as if MacIver, who had concealed so many things, could have planned to conceal a murder. He could have lost a brief struggle and the other man could have blundered upon his successful escape. It explained even better than the official verdict why the shoes, wallet, and keys had been on the roof, and why they had been in the positions in which they had been found. MacIver had put them all down neatly, but the shoes had been kicked aside in the silent, seconds-long fight. The exclamation MacIver had uttered could have been in his surprise at having lost. It was tantalizing. It answered all the questions the evidence asked. It felt good on MacIver—within his capacities. Yet Leland had no proof, and in the lack of it, his instincts made him keep his mind clear for the real questions. Why had the police called their superiors? Why were MacIver’s books in code? Why were his movements so difficult to trace? Why did so many people, his wife among them, know so little about him?