"No."
Stone spoke up. "The buder told me that Mr. Calder kept a nine millimeter pistol in the same safe where he kept his jewelry."
"Thank you," Durkee replied. "Mrs. Calder, how would you characterize your marriage?"
"As a very happy one," Arrington replied.
"Did you and your husband ever quarrel?"
"Of course." She smiled a litde. "But our quarrels were almost always good-humored. You might call them mock quarrels. We argued about lots of things, but always with respect and affection."
"You say your quarrels were 'almost' always good-humored. Did they ever become violent?"
"You mean, did Vance ever hit me? Certainly not."
"Did you ever hit him?"
She looked down. "I can remember slapping him, once and only once. He'd said something that offended me."
"What did he do when you slapped him?"
"He apologized, and it never happened again. My husband was a gendeman in every possible sense of the word."
"When you argued, what did you argue about?"
"He would give me a hard time, sometimes, about how much shopping I did. Vance had a tailor, a shirtmaker, and a bootmaker; he ordered his clothes from swatches, so shopping was very simple for him. I think it both amused and horrified him how to learn how women shop. He could never understand why I would buy things, then take them back the next day."
"Any other subjects you argued about?"
"Sometimes wed disagree on child rearing. Vance believed strongly in corporal punishment, and I didn't. Hed been brought up that way by his parents, and in English schools, and he thought if it was good enough for him, it was good enough for his son."
"Did he use corporal punishment often with your child?"
"Rarely, and then only a palm applied to the bottom."
"And you disagreed with that?"
"Yes. I was never struck, as a child, and I didn't want Peter to be."
"What else did you disagree about?"
She shrugged. "I can't think of anything else specifically."
"What about women?"
"There were one or two of my friends he didn't like much, but he tolerated them for my sake."
"That's not what I mean," Durkee said. "Are you aware that your husband had a reputation for sleeping with his leading ladies?"
Arrington smiled. "That was before we were married. My husband walked the straight and narrow."
"And if you had learned that he didn't, might that have provoked a quarrel?"
"It might have provoked a divorce," Arrington replied. "When we married, I let him know in no uncertain terms what I expected of him in that regard."
"And what did you expect?"
"Fidelity."