Rider sat there looking at her and nodding stupidly, as if he did not know what to say next. But Hook did.

“This is real too, Miss Madera. I can get a deposition from every boy and girl in his graduating class that this letter represents the Christopher Hook they knew. And that he was straight. That he was not an invert.”

She met his eyes for a moment, then looked down at her lap and shook her head wearily, almost hopelessly. “I just don’t know what I can say to you. To either of you. I only know what happened. But I’ve already told you that. And frankly I don’t even know why I’m here alone, why these new ‘developments’ of yours don’t involve Mrs. Rubin the same as me. After all, she was the eyewitness. And she reported what he said too. It isn’t just my statement that he talked about having nothing to live for.”

The sergeant was nodding along with her, seemingly only too eager to agree with her. “That’s very true. You’re right about that. But that part, the tone of the letter, is just one of our problems. There’s another one, Miss Madera. And it concerns just you, not Mrs. Rubin.” He picked up the letter and the envelope again. “It’s the date of the letter. See? December eighth. And the boy finished writing it the next day, on the ninth. Which as you can see is the date of the postmark. Tuesday, December nine, A.M.”

Miss Madera smiled in bewilderment. “So?”

“In your statement, you said you picked him up on Wednesday.”

“And I did. Wednesday morning.” She was not smiling now.

“Wednesday morning,” Rider repeated. “You’re still sure about that?”

“I am positive.”

The sergeant shrugged wearily and crushed out his cigarette. “Well, we just wanted to be sure. Because as you can see, everything else points to Tuesday morning as the time the boy left town. The letter. And this Icarus he stayed with—he says it was Tuesday too. So you can see our problem.”

Her eyes coolly searched the sergeant’s face for every nuance of meaning. Then she shook her head. “No, Sergeant, I can’t see that it’s a problem. At least, not my problem. I picked him up Wednesday morning. If he started to leave Tuesday morning and changed his mind, or if someone else local picked him up and he stayed on in town another day—well, I just can’t see that it’s my problem. Yours, maybe. And Mr. Hook’s. But not mine.”

“So you want to leave your statement as it is.”

“The facts haven’t changed, so neither will my statement.”

Rider gave her a rueful, little-boy grin. “Well, I guess that was our mistake,” he allowed. “We thought the facts had changed.”

“So I gather.”

“But you picked him up Wednesday morning, around ten. And he killed himself that night—or Thursday morning actually, a little after midnight.”

In answer she nodded gravely, looking down at her hands in her lap.