“Wendell, you still have misconceptions about me. You aren’t responsible and they aren’t important. Norma’s dependence on you frightened me. I don’t know a lot about psychotherapy; the relationship between doctor and patient is beyond my understanding. You tried to get me to go easy. Maybe that’s part of your role as a doctor or maybe manipulating her and violating her trust in you was the only chance you had to squeeze through this, but I had to take it for what it seemed. She never did believe that stuff about talking sports, but she—and Karen—assured me that it was impossible for you to treat your friend and neighbor. I had no choice but to believe it. There was still the missing hour every day. MacIver left his house at eight-thirty and didn’t get to the office until ten o’clock or later. When Norma learned that, she thought that he’d had a girl friend.”

Wendell Roberts sat back. “What did you tell her?”

“That it was very, very unlikely. He would have left her. He had shown the capacity for divorce.”

Roberts said, “He loved her desperately.”

“I know that, too, now,” Leland said. He explained how Mike’s information about MacIver’s papers had led to the conclusion that only Roberts could have broken into the office.

“I wrote some of those letters years before Norma introduced us,” Roberts said. “I was interested in the housing program. It wasn’t until I began to learn something about architecture that I realized how sterile and ugly the designs were. It was Colin who told me that the program was a fraud. At first he saw nothing wrong in it—it was the way of the world. Of course we didn’t argue. In those days he was much too close to the calamity that finally befell him to be tampered with. He talked of suicide a lot more—you’ll find out.

“He offered to get the letters, later, when his attitude had changed. He had grown, but he had learned more about his associates, too. A few were hoping to get closer to the people who control the narcotics in this city. They’re more in public life than you could imagine—”

“You mean like Herbert Davis?”