Death Times Three SSC (11 page)

"That's wonderful," Thin Mouth said. "Explain some more."

"Sure; glad to." I walked across. "Do you ask why Tingley would put an object in his hat? It was the logical place for it. He wanted to take it home with him, and meanwhile he wanted to keep it hidden from someone who might have gone snooping around his desk and other obvious places. He was not an obvious man. Neither am I." I reached up and took the hat from the hook.

And it was in the hat!

That made up for all the bad breaks that had come my way over a period of years. Nothing like that will ever happen again. It was so utterly unexpected that I nearly dropped it when it rolled out of the hat, but I grabbed and caught it and had it--a midget-sized jar, the kind they used for samples in the factory. It was about two-thirds full with a label on it marked in pencil, "11-14-Y."

"You see," I said, trying my damnedest not to let my voice tremble with excitement, "it's a question of brains."

They were gawking at me, absolutely speechless. I got out my penknife and, with a tip of a blade, dug out a bit of the stuff in the jar and conveyed it to my mouth. My God, it tasted sweet--I mean bitter!

I spat it out. "I'm going to promote you boys," I said indulgently. "And raise your pay. And give you a month's vacation."

I departed. I hadn't even taken off my coat and hat.

It was too bad dinner had to be delayed the first day that Fritz was back on the job after his grippe, but it couldn't be helped. While we were waiting for Carrie Murphy to come, I went to the kitchen and had a glass of milk and tried to cheer Fritz up by telling him that grippe often leaves people so that they can't taste anything.

At half past seven Wolfe was at his desk and I was at mine with my notebook. Seated near me, with a dick behind his chair, was Philip Tingley. Beyond him were Carrie Murphy, Miss Yates, and another dick. Inspector Cramer was at the other end of Wolfe's desk, next to Guthrie Judd. None of them looked very happy, Carrie in particular. It was her Wolfe started on, after Cramer had turned the meeting over to him.

"There shouldn't be much in this," Wolfe said bluntly. What he meant was he hoped there wouldn't be, that close to dinnertime. "Miss Murphy, did you go to Miss Yates's apartment yesterday evening to discuss something with her?"

Carrie nodded.

"Did she make a telephone call?"

"Yes."

"Whom did she call and at what time?"

"Mr. Arthur Tingley. It was eight o'clock." "At his home or his office?"

"His office." She stopped to swallow. "She tried his home first, but he wasn't there, so she called the office and got him."

"She talked with him?"

"Yes."

"Did you?"

"No."

Wolfe's eyes moved: "Miss Yates. Is Miss Murphy's statement correct?"

"It is," said Gwendolyn firmly.

"You recognized Tingley's voice?"

"Certainly. I've been hearing it all my life--"

"Of course you have. Thanks." Wolfe shifted again. "Mr. Philip Tingley. Yesterday afternoon your father--your brother asked you to be at his office at seven-thirty in the evening. Is that right?"

"Yes!" Philip said aggressively.

"Did you go?"

"Yes, but not at seven-thirty. I was ten minutes late."

"Did you see him?"

"I saw him dead. On the floor behind the screen. I saw Amy Duncan there, too, unconscious, and I felt her pulse and--"

"Naturally. Being human, you displayed humanity." Wolfe made a face. "Are you sure Arthur Tingley was dead?"

Philip grunted. "If you had seen him--"

"His throat had been cut?"

"Yes, and the blood had spread

"Thank you," Wolfe said curtly. "Mr. Guthrie Judd."

The two pairs of eyes met in midair.

Wolfe wiggled a finger at him. "Well, sir, it looks as if you'll have to referee this. Miss Yates says Tingley was alive at eight o'clock and Philip says he was dead at seven-forty. We'd like to hear from you what shape he was in at seven-thirty. Will you tell us?"

"No."

"If you don't you're an ass. The screws are all loose now. There is still a chance this business will be censored for the press if I feel like being discreet. But I'm not bound, as law officers are, to protect the embarrassing secrets of prominent people from the public curiosity. I'm doing a job and you can help me out a little. If you don't--" Wolfe shrugged.

Judd breathed through his nose.

"Well?" Wolfe asked impatiently.

"Tingley was dead." Judd bit it off.

"Then you did enter that building and go to that office? At half past seven?"

"Yes. That was the time of the appointment. Tingley was on the floor with his throat cut. Near him was a young woman I had never seen, unconscious. I was in the room less than a minute."

Wolfe nodded. "I'm not a policeman, and I'm certainly not the district attorney, but I think it is quite likely that you will never be under the necessity of telling this story in a courtroom. They won't want to inconvenience you. However, in the event that a subpoena takes you to the witness stand, are you prepared to swear to the truth of what you have just said?"

"I am"

"Good." Wolfe's gaze swept to Miss Yates. "Are you still positive it was Tingley you talked to, Miss Yates?"

She met his eyes squarely. "I am." Her voice was perfectly controlled. "I don't say they're lying. I don't know. I only know if it was someone imitating Arthur Tingley's voice, I've never heard anything to equal it."

"You still think it was he?"

"I do."

"Why did you tell me this morning that when you got home yesterday you stood your umbrella in the bathtub to drain?"

"Because I..."

She stopped, and it was easy to tell from her face what had happened. An alarm had sounded inside her. Something had yelled at her, "Look out!"

"Why," she asked, her voice a shade thinner than it had been, but quite composed, "did I say that? I don't remember it."

"I do," Wolfe declared. "The reason I bring it up, you also told me you went home at a quarter past six. It didn't start raining until seven, so why did your umbrella need draining at six-fifteen?"

Miss Yates snorted. "What you remember," she said sarcastically. "What you say I said, that I didn't say--"

"Very well. We won't argue it. There are two possible explanations. One, that your umbrella got wet without any rain. Two, that you went home, not at six-fifteen, as you said you did, but considerably later. I like the second one best because it fits so well into the only satisfactory theory of the murder of Arthur Tingley. If you had gone home at six-fifteen, as you said, you wouldn't very well have been at the office to knock Miss Duncan on the head when she arrived at ten minutes past seven. Of course, you could have gone and returned to the office, but that wouldn't change things any."

Miss Yates smiled. That was a mistake, because the muscles around her mouth weren't under control, so they twitched. The result was that instead of looking confident and contemptuous she merely looked sick.

"The theory starts back a few weeks," Wolfe resumed. "As you remarked this morning, that business and that place were everything to you; you had no life except there. When the Provisions & Beverages Corporation made an offer to buy the business, you became alarmed, and upon reflection you were convinced that sooner or later Tingley would sell. That old factory would of course be abandoned, and probably you with it. That was intolerable to you. You considered ways of preventing it, and what you hit on was adulterating the product, damaging its reputation sufficiently so that the Provisions & Beverages Corporation wouldn't want it. You chose what seemed to you the lesser of two evils. Doubtless you thought that the reputation could be gradually re-established."

Carrie was staring at her boss in amazement.

"It seemed probable," Wolfe conceded, "that it would work. The only trouble was, you were overconfident. You were, in your own mind, so completely identified with the success and very existence of that place and what went on there, that you never dreamed that Tingley would arrange to check on you secretly. Yesterday afternoon you learned about it when you caught Miss Murphy with a sample of a mix you had made. And you had no time to consider the situation, to do anything about it, for a sample had already reached Tingley. He kept you waiting in the factory until after Philip had gone and he phoned his niece--for obviously you didn't know he had done that--and then called you into his office and accused you."

"It's a lie," Miss Yates said harshly. "It's a lie! He didn't accuse me! He didn't--!"

"Pfui! He not only accused you, he told you that he had proof. A jar that Miss Murphy had previously delivered to him that afternoon, from a mix you had made. I suppose he fired you. He may have told you he intended to prosecute. And I suppose you implored him, pleaded with him, and were still pleading with him, from behind, while he was stooping over the washbasin. He didn't know you had got the paperweight from his desk, and never did know it. It knocked him out. You went and got a knife and finished the job, there where he lay on the floor, and you were searching the room, looking for the sample jar which he had got from Miss Murphy, when you heard footsteps."

A choking noise came from her throat.

"Naturally, that alarmed you," Wolfe continued. "But the steps were of only one person, and that a woman. So you stood behind the screen with the weight in your hand, hoping that, whoever it was, she would come straight to that room and enter it, and she did. As she passed the edge of the screen, you struck. Then you got an idea upon which you immediately acted by pressing her fingers around the knife handle, from which, of course, your own prints had been wiped--"

A stifled gasp of horror from Carrie Murphy interrupted him. He answered it without moving his eyes from Miss Yates: "I doubt if you had a notion of incriminating Miss Duncan. You probably calculated--and for an impromptu and rapid calculation under stress is was a good one--that when it was found that the weight had been wiped and the knife handle had not, the inference would be, not that Miss Duncan had killed Tingley, but that the murderer had clumsily tried to pin it on her. That would tend to divert suspicions from you, for you had been on friendly terms with her and bore her no grudge. It was a very pretty finesse for a hasty one. Hasty, because you were now in a panic and had not found the jar. I suppose you had previously found that the safe door was open and had looked in there, but now you tried it again. No jar was visible, but a locked metal box was there on the shelf. You picked it up and shook it, and it sounded as if the jar were in it."

Cramer growled, "I'll be damned."

"Or," Wolfe went on, "it sounded enough like it to satisfy you. The box was locked. To go to the factory again and get something to pry it open with--no. Enough. Besides, the jar was in no other likely place, so that must be it. You fled. You took the box and went, leaving by a rear exit, for there might be someone in front--a car, waiting for Miss Duncan. You hurried home through the rain, for it was certainly raining then, and had just got your umbrella stood in the tub and your things off when Miss Murphy arrived." "No!" Carrie Murphy blurted.

Wolfe frowned at her. "Why not?"

"Because she--she was--"

"Dry and composed and herself? I suppose so. An exceptionally cool and competent head has for thirty years been content to busy itself with tidbits." Wolfe's gaze was still on Miss Yates. "While you were talking with Miss Murphy you had an idea. You would lead the conversation to a point where a phone call to Tingley would be appropriate, and you did so; and you called his home first and then his office, and faked conversation with him. The idea itself was fairly clever, but your follow-up was brilliant. You didn't mention it to the police and advised Miss Murphy not to, realizing it would backfire if someone entered the office or Miss Duncan regained consciousness before eight o'clock. If it turned out that someone had, and Miss Murphy blabbed about the phone call, you could say that you had been deceived by someone imitating Tingley's voice, or even that you had faked the phone call for its effect on Miss Murphy; if it turned out that someone hadn't, the phone call would stick, with Miss Murphy to corroborate it."

A grunt of impatience came from Cramer.

"Not much more," Wolfe said. "But you couldn't open the box with Miss Murphy there. And then the police came. That must have been a bad time for you. As soon as you got a chance you forced the lid open, and I can imagine your disappointment and dismay when you saw no jar. Only a pair of child's shoes and an envelope! You were in a hole, and in your desperation you did something extremely stupid. Of course, you didn't want the box in your flat, you wanted to get rid of it, but why the devil did you mail it to Mr. Cramer?

Why didn't you put something heavy in it and throw it in the river? I suppose you examined the contents of the envelope, and figured that if the police got hold of it their attention would be directed to Guthrie Judd and Philip. You must have been out of your mind. Instead of directing suspicions against Philip or Judd, the result was just the opposite, for it was obvious that neither of them would have mailed the box to the police, and therefore some other person had somehow got it."