“I’m all right, if you want to ask questions,” she said with a sigh. After all, she thought, I’m a newspaper person myself. In a rinky-dink kind of way.

“You sure?” Randall had the grace to ask.

“Yes.”

Catherine knew that Tom had only been held in check by Randall’s presence. His pad and pencil had been ready in his hand when he knocked on the door.

In a clear monotone, she went through her story again. She wished it were more exciting, since she had had to tell it so often.

“Galton. Jerry Selforth,” Tom mumbled when she had finished, scribbling a list of people he wanted to interview.

“Who were her friends, Catherine?” he asked, pencil poised to write.

He looked up impatiently when she didn’t reply.

“I don’t know,” she said slowly, surprised. “I don’t think Miss Gaites had friends. She didn’t go to church or to the bridge club, or anything like that. She told my father she saw enough people at the office every day to make her sick of them.”

And Catherine had to admit at that moment that her own attitude was much the same.

The thought of becoming a Leona Gaites frightened her.

“When was the last time you saw Leona?” Randall asked in his slow voice.

“When she helped me go through the things left in Father’s office; things Jerry Selforth didn’t want to buy. They had to be moved out of the house before Tom moved in. We put them up in the attic over there. Some old filing cabinets. I think a few other things.”

“Not since then?” Tom asked. “I thought you had known her for years.”

“Yes, I have-had. But that doesn’t mean I liked her.”

The two men seemed startled by this statement, which Catherine had delivered with bland finality. She returned their look impassively. They had not expected this from her, she saw. She really must have presented a skimmed-milk image.