“That she might be eager to be rid of him so she could take on a younger man like Doctor Evans,” said Shayne promptly.

“Sure, there’s that. Or the chauffeur or even Harold Peabody who are both on Henrietta’s list. But I tell you, Mike, we checked every angle. I had Doc Higgins go over the complete record of the Rogell case in Jenson’s files. And Jenson’s secretary told him privately that Jenson had urged Rogell not to marry… had predicted that just this would happen if he took on a twenty-three-year-old sex-pot like Anita.”

“You mean Jenson warned him his heart wouldn’t stand it.”

“Exactly.”

“Then maybe Anita did kill him,” said Shayne thoughtfully. “If she knew how serious his condition was and kept egging him on beyond his physical ability.”

“Maybe she did,” agreed Gentry. “It wouldn’t surprise me one damned bit. But that’s not a crime, Mike. Not according to the statutes, it isn’t.”

“All right, I understand why you passed up Henrietta’s accusations after John’s death. But what about last night? The little dog that died after he ate her creamed chicken. That looks pretty clear-cut to me.”

“Sure it does, hearing Henrietta tell it. But the dog had been pretty sick a couple days ago. Did she tell you that? In fact, it was one of those inbred, pampered little bitches that was always having stomach upsets.”

“But it never died of convulsions before, ten minutes after eating a plate of creamed chicken.”

“No, it never did,” agreed Gentry promptly. “And I’d run a test fast enough if I had the body. But I haven’t. It was already buried by the time Donovan and Petrie got to the house.”

“A suspicious circumstance in itself,” Shayne pointed out. “Why the unseemly hurry?”

“Sure, it’s suspicious. On the other hand, there was Anita having hysterics all over the place because of her little pet’s death, and her almost pathological horror of any sort of corpse. That’s why she urged her husband to put a clause in his will that he should be cremated, and why she hysterically ordered the chauffeur to bury Daffy within minutes after her death.”