"I'm sure. Edith killed herself. I don't care if she cut her husband's rope or not."
Fred shrugged him off. "You're just not up to your usual detective-sharpness so I'm taking on the bulk of this here investigation. But see? Deep down, you still don't think Edith was the one who cut the line!"
"I don't much give a flying you-know-what who cut her husband's rope as long as no one is blaming me, or any of us."
Fred checked his notes again. "Then there's the matter of the pen."
"Edith's fountain pen? What about it?"
"There ain't no pen." Fred smiled proudly. "Least there wasn't a pen in her room. You tell me how you write a suicide note when you don't have a pen."
"Maybe the police took it. Or one of the others. All of Bird Song was in the room."
"Nope. I was there right off the bat, right behind screaming Gladys. I'd have seen if someone swiped it."
Dean thought a minute. "The white dress. I'll bet she put it in her pocket. It probably went out with the body." Fred looked crestfallen.
He quickly recovered. "But that just goes to prove what I been saying. We got to look at all these loose ends and satisfy ourselves about 'em." He wet his pencil. "Like what time was it when the victim left your room?"
"Damned, Fred! I was trying to get a naked woman the hell out of my bed, just after my wife caught her there! I sure wasn't checking the time and writing it down!"
Fred seemed less than satisfied with Dean's answer but didn't push it. Like any good mystery novel detective, he'd bide his time. He carefully put a star next to the unanswered question. Dean, in turn, began trying to remember the time sequence in his own mind. But Fred was right about one thing. Dean wasn't thinking at near his usual high level. Cynthia Dean kept pushing away all other thoughts from his tattered mind.