"And you believe her?"
"Yes," Tobin said. "You hesitated a moment."
Tobin shrugged. "You asked me an absolute question that required an absolute answer." He nodded back to the room where Ken Norris's body lay, and where Cindy sat with a dour steward. Tobin smiled. "Absolute answers take a little longer."
"She's very nice-looking."
"Believe it or not, Captain," Tobin said, knowing what the large, white-haired man in the perfectly tailored white uniform was implying, "I've been around nice-looking women before."
They leaned against the railing and watched the silver sea sprawl in the moonlight. The night noises had largely subsided-most people were drunk and passed out, fornicating, or simply sleeping. Tobin watched the horizon line. Easy to imagine that the entire planet was water. That this was a little world unto itself, that there was no other world at all.
"Perhaps he tried something on her and she didn't like it. It could always be self-defense."
"You want an answer right away," Tobin said, "and I understand that. You want to greet your passengers in the morning with the news that, yes, there has been a murder but no, the murderer is not at large. In fact, she's in custody and everything is wonderful."
"I don't want panic. I don't want the cruise ruined."
Tobin said, angrily, "I don't want to see a woman charged with something she didn't do."
"Then you really believe somebody was in the closet?"
"If she says so."
"Then who would it have been?" The captain caught himself and laughed. "I guess that would fall under the general heading of stupid questions, wouldn't it? If we knew who was in the closet, then we'd know the killer."
"Not necessarily."
"What?"
"She didn't say this person was the killer. She just said he or she was in the closet."
"What's the difference?"
Tobin, dragging on his cigarillo and thinking that it wasn't really smoking if you didn't inhale, said, "I'd say there's a good chance that that's the killer-the person in the closet-but we don't know that for sure."
"Then what else would he or she have been doing in the closet?"
"I don't know."
Capt. Robert Hackett, who had the outsize, handsome features of a Roman senator, said, "You really think she's innocent?"
"You talked to her. Do you really think she killed him?"
"Yes."
"God, really?"
"Who else would have done it?"
"The person in the closet."
The captain shook his head. "You really believe there was somebody in the closet?" Before Tobin could respond, Hackett said, "I'd better go tell the other cast members what's going on. There are three of them in the lounge."
Tobin said, "Do you mind if I go with you?"
"No." Then he nodded to the room. "Maybe you'd want to take the young lady for a stroll along the deck while we remove the body. Then we can go down to the lounge. You might tell her we'll get her a different room for the rest of the voyage."
He started back toward the cabin and then paused. "I still think she did it, Mr. Tobin. I don't believe a word about the person in the closet. Not a word.”