It occurred to Bill Weigand that he was, on a hunch basis, eliminating a good many. He reminded himself that all eliminations were tentative. He also reminded himself that he had an unusual number of possibilities.

The Masons, mother or son, or mother and son? Opportunity was obvious. Motive. Here, too, the cause to hate lay well back in the years. But bitterness had more cause to remain, even increasingly to corrode. With the boy, particularly. The boy had, apparently -- if Mrs. MacReady was right in what she had told Mullins -- only in recent months been forced to give up college, to work as a busboy. Seeing the man he blamed for this made much of -- youth and bitterness and --

Bill picked up the telephone; got Mullins.

``Send out a pickup on Mrs. Mason and the boy when you've got enough to go on,'' Bill said. ``Right?''

Mullins would do.

A man named Lars Simon, playwright director, had expressed a wish that Anthony Payne drop dead. He would say, of course, that he had not really had any such wish; that what he had said was no more than one of those things one does say, lightly, meaning nothing. Which probably would turn out to be true; which he obviously had to be given the opportunity to say.

A man named Blaine Smythe, with ``y'' and ``e'' but pronounced without them, had been fired at Payne's insistence. He was also, if Pam North was right, a closer acquaintance of Lauren Payne's than she, now, was inclined to admit. He might deny the latter; would certainly deny any connection between the two things, or any connection of either with murder. He would have to be given the opportunity.