The Naked Sun by Isaac Asimov

you?”
    “Why should it?”
    “Well, the films don’t say, and I’ve always wanted to know——Is it all right if I ask a question?”
    “Go ahead,” said Baley stolidly.
    “Do you have a wife assigned to you?”
    “I’m married. I don’t know about the assignment part.”
    “And I know you see your wife any time you want to and she sees you and neither of you thinks anything of it.”
    Baley nodded.
    “Well, when you see her, suppose you just want to——” She lifted her hands elbow-high, pausing as though searching for the proper phrase. She tried again, “Can you just—any time …” She let it dangle.
    Baley didn’t try to help.
    She said, “Well, never mind. I don’t know why I should bother you with that sort of thing now anyway. Are you through with me?” She looked as though she might cry again.
    Baley said, “One more try, Gladia. Forget that no one would see your husband. Suppose someone
did
. Who might it have been?”
    “It’s just useless to guess. It couldn’t be anyone.”
    “It has to be someone. Agent Gruer says there is reason to suspect some one person. So you see there must be someone.”
    A small, joyless smile flickered over the girl’s face. “I know who he thinks did it.”
    “All right. Who?”
    She put a small hand on her breast. “I.”

6
A THEORY IS REFUTED
    “I should have said, Partner Elijah,” said Daneel, speaking suddenly, “that that is an obvious conclusion.”
    Baley cast a surprised look at his robot partner. “Why obvious?” he asked.
    “The lady herself,” said Daneel, “states that she was the only person who did or who would see her husband. The social situation on Solaria is such that even she cannot plausibly present anything else as the truth. Certainly Agent Gruer would find it reasonable, even obligatory, to believe that a Solarian husband would be seen only by his wife. Since only one person could be in seeing range, only one person could be the murderer. Or murderess, rather. Agent Gruer, you will remember, said that only one person could have done it. Anyone else he considered impossible. Well?”
    “He also said,” said Baley, “that that one person couldn’t have done it, either.”
    “By which he probably meant that there was no weapon found at the scene of the crime. Presumably Mrs. Delmarre could explain that anomaly.”
    He gestured with cool robotic politeness toward where Gladia sat, still in viewing focus, her eyes cast down, her small mouth compressed.
    Jehoshaphat, thought Baley, we’re forgetting the lady.
    Perhaps it was annoyance that had caused him to forget. It was Daneel who annoyed him, he thought, with his unemotional approach to problems. Or perhaps it was himself, with his emotional approach. He did not stop to analyze the matter.
    He said, “That will be all for now, Gladia. However one goes about it, break contact. Good-bye.”
    She said softly, “Sometimes one says, ‘Done viewing’ but I like ‘Good-bye’ better. You seem disturbed, Elijah. I’m sorry, because I’m used to having people think I did it, so you don’t need to feel disturbed.”
    Daneel said, “
Did
you do it, Gladia?”
    “No,” she said angrily.
    “Good-bye, then.”
    With the anger not yet washed out of her face she was gone. For a moment, though, Baley could still feel the impact of those quite extraordinary gray eyes.
    She might say she was used to having people think her a murderess, but that was very obviously a lie. Her anger spoke more truly than her words. Baley wondered of how many other lies she was capable.
    And now Baley found himself alone with Daneel. He said, “All right, Daneel, I’m not altogether a fool.”
    “I have never thought you were, Partner Elijah.”
    “Then tell me what made you say there was no murder weapon found at the site of the crime? There was nothing in the evidence so far, nothing in anything I’ve heard that would lead us to that conclusion.”
    “You are correct. I have additional