He made a grimace. “But was it really, then, this pretty creature who shot Toller? Has she committed a murder?”
He started to argue with himself. “But if she has done all those things. I wouldn't necessarily consider her a really bad woman. She's anything but bad, and in this dreadful business here she may have had a certain claim to the right to both lie and kill. To lie—because from all accounts her husband worships her. And to kill—because a blackmailer is always an outlaw, and who knows yet what this one's terms for secrecy were?”
He rose up from his chair. “But I'm not certain yet she did fire that fatal shot. It may have been that Marriott girl, or yet again”—he hesitated quite a lone time—“Dr. Athol.”
The following morning when Chime came into Larose's room at seven o'clock, he b
