Madden inquired next about the audit of the scholarship fund.

There was an annual audit, Garth informed him. No discrepancies or shortages had ever been found. Brian Thayer was a thoroughly honest and competent administrator. His salary had reached the ten thousand mark. His expenses ran another four or five thousand. The lawyer didn't know him very well although he saw him occasionally at some dinner party -- Thayer, like himself, Madden reflected, was the extra man so prized by hostesses -- and found him easy enough to talk to. But he didn't play golf, didn't seem to belong to any local clubs -- his work took him away a lot, of course -- which probably accounted for his tendency to keep to himself.

Garth's glance began to flicker to his watch.

He said that he had already told the police chief that he didn't know what insurance man had recommended Johnston to Mrs. Meeker. He would offer no theory to account for her murder. The whole thing, his manner conveyed, was so far outside the normal routine of Hohlbein and Garth that it practically demanded being swept under the rug.

No doubt Mrs. Meeker had snubbed him many a time and he felt no grief over her passing. Even so, Madden's dislike of the suave, correct lawyer deepened. It would be all right with him, he decided, if his investigation of the fraud, with its probable by-product of murder, led to Garth's door. Motive? Ten-thousand-dollar bequest. At first glance, not much of a motive for a man of his standing; but for all his air of affluence, who could tell what his private financial picture was?