"Gladia herself did. You two went for walks."
"So? We were neighbors. It is a common thing to do. She seemed a pleasant person."
"You approved of her, then?"
Leebig shrugged. "Talking to her was relaxing."
"What did you talk about?"
"Robotics." There was a flavor of surprise about the word as though there were wonder that the question could be asked.
"And she talked robotics too?"
"She knew nothing about robotics. Ignorant! But she listened. She has some sort of field-force rigmarole she plays with; field coloring, she calls it. I have no patience with that, but I listened."
"All this without personal presence?" Leebig looked revolted and did not answer. Baley tried again, "Were you attracted to her?"
"What?"
"Did you find her attractive? Physically?"
Even Leebig's bad eyelid lifted and his lips quivered. "Filthy animal," he muttered.
"Let me put it this way, then. When did you cease finding Gladia pleasant? You used that word yourself, if you remember."
"What do you mean?"
"You said you found her pleasant. Now you believe she murdered her husband. That isn't the mark of a pleasant person."
"I was mistaken about her."
"But you decided you were mistaken before she killed her husband, if she did so. You stopped walking with her some time before the murder. Why?"
Leebig said, "Is that important?"
"Everything is important till proven otherwise."
"Look, if you want information from me as a roboticist, ask it. I won't answer personal questions."
Baley said, "You were closely associated with both the murdered man and the chief suspect. Don't you see that personal questions are unavoidable? Why did you stop walking with Gladia?"
Leebig snapped, "There came a time when I ran out of things to say; when I was too busy; when I found no reason to continue the walks."
"When you no longer found her pleasant, in other words."
"All right. Put it so."
"Why was she no longer pleasant?"
Leebig shouted, "I have no reason."
Baley ignored the other's excitement. "You are still someone who has known Gladia well. What could her motive be?"
"Her motive?"
"No one has suggested any motive for the murder. Surely Gladia wouldn't commit murder without a motive."
"Great Galaxy!" Leebig leaned his head back as though to laugh, but didn't. "No one told you? Well, perhaps no one knew. I knew, though. She told me. She told me frequently."
"Told you what, Dr. Leebig?"
"Why, that she quarreled with her husband. Quarreled bitterly and frequently. She hated him, Earthman. Didn't anyone tell you that? Didn't she tell you?"
15. A PORTRAIT IS COLORED
Baley took it between the eyes and tried not to show it.
Presumably, living as they did, Solarians considered one another's private lives to be sacrosanct. Questions concerning marriage and children were in bad taste. He supposed then that chronic quarreling could exist between husband and wife and be a matter into which curiosity was equally forbidden.
But even when murder had been committed? Would no one commit the social crime of asking the suspect if she quarreled with her husband? Or of mentioning the matter if they happened to know of it?
Well, Leebig had.
Baley said, "What did the quarrels concern?"
"You had better ask her, I think."
He better had, thought Baley. He rose stiffly, "Thank you, Dr. Leebig, for your cooperation. I may need your help again later. I hope you will keep yourself available."
"Done viewing," said Leebig, and he and the segment of his room vanished abruptly.
For the first time Baley found himself not minding a plane flight through open space. Not minding it at all. It was almost as though he were in his own element.
He wasn't even thinking of Earth or of Jessie. He had been away from Earth only a matter of weeks, yet it might as well have been years. He had been on Solaria only the better part of three days and yet it seemed forever.
How fast could a man adapt to nightmare?
Or was it Gladia? He would be seeing her soon, not viewing her. Was that what gave him confidence and this odd feeling of mixed apprehension and anticipation?
Would she endure it? he wondered. Or would she slip away after a few moments of seeing, begging off as Quemot had done?
She stood at the other end of a long room when he entered. She might almost have been an impressionistic representation of herself, she was reduced so to essentials.
Her lips were faintly red, her eyebrows lightly penciled, her earlobes faintly blue, and, except for that, her face was untouched. She looked pale, a little frightened, and very young.
Her brown-blond hair was drawn back, and her gray-blue eyes were somehow shy. Her dress was a blue so dark as to be almost black, with a thin white edging curling down each side. She wore long sleeves, white gloves, and flat-heeled shoes. Not an inch of skin showed anywhere but in her face. Even her neck was covered by a kind of unobtrusive ruching.
Baley stopped where he was. "Is this close enough, Gladia?"
She was breathing with shallow quickness. She said, "I had forgotten what to expect really. It's just like viewing, isn't it? I mean, if you don't think of it as seeing."
Baley said, "It's all quite normal to me."
"Yes, on Earth." She closed her eyes. "Sometimes I try to imagine it. Just crowds of people everywhere. You walk down a road and there are others walking with you and still others walking in the other direction. Dozens - "