Rex Stout (26 page)

“Are you ready to swear that you took the impressions at her request, and gave them to her, and she paid you for them?”

“If I have to, yes, sir.”

“I mean, what you’ve told me is the truth? Every word of it the truth?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And you’ve held nothing back?”

“No, sir.”

“If I bring Miss Tritt here, will you repeat your story, just as you have told it, in her presence?”

Richards squirmed. But almost at once he nodded firmly. “Yes, sir. I should hate to, but it’s my own fault. On account of that radio. Yes, sir.”

The inspector turned abruptly to Buysse. “You win,” he snapped. “Maybe this has nothing to do with the murder, in fact I would offer odds that it hasn’t, but I’m going to follow it up for my personal satisfaction. No woman is going to make a monkey out of me if I have anything to say about it. I may need Richards later on, so I’ll keep him for the present—”

“I’ll keep him for you, Inspector.”

“Much obliged, but I’ll attend to it.” Cramer reached to press the button on his desk.

Buysse shook his head. “No, I’ll keep him. You see, I gave him a promise and I’d like to keep that too. We’ll be around, no matter when you want him. All of us. We have nothing else to do, and we’d like to keep sort of in touch with the situation. If you don’t mind.”

Cramer grunted. The door opened, and Sergeant Burke entered. Cramer addressed him:

“I want Portia Tritt and Leo Kranz here as quick as you can find them. If they balk, take them as material witnesses and no apologies. When they come, keep ’em separated, and let me know. I’ll be in McConnell’s room.” He got up.

Burke glanced around. “Any of these—”

“No. They’re just slumming.” The inspector stalked out.

C
ommissioner Humbert sat and looked glum.

District Attorney Skinner stood with his back to a window, his hands thrust into his trouser pockets, and told Inspector Cramer in an energetic and belligerent tone:

“You admit yourself that it probably has nothing to do with the murder. Damn it, all I’m asking for is a little discretion, a little regard for realities. Portia Tritt is no particular friend of mine, but she knows a lot of people and they’re making my life miserable. I repeat, Cramer, you can’t treat people of standing and influence like you treat a bunch of gangsters. You simply can’t get away with it. Another thing. I’m called in from the golf links to the telephone to hear the pleasant news that you’ve hauled in Portia Tritt again as if she were a bag of potatoes, and I break my neck getting down here, and what do I find? After digging up evidence against Guy Carew and persuading Anderson to paste a murder charge on him, which alone is a ton of dynamite—”

Humbert put a hand up. “Now wait a minute, Skinner. Be fair. Cramer didn’t persuade us to arrest Carew. He placed the evidence before us, and the decision was made by all four, including Anderson.”

They were in the commissioner’s spacious and comfortable office, at three o’clock Sunday afternoon, with the shades drawn to exclude the hot August sun. Humbert, who had breakfasted at noon at the Churchill, had a highball at his elbow on his desk; Skinner had finished one; Cramer, who had lunched on salmon sandwiches and milk in McConnell’s room, joining in the attack on Pinkie Frick between bites, had refused his and continued to chew on a cigar.

The district attorney shifted to an aggravating tone of pained remonstrance: “I am willing to concede, Inspector, that Miss Tritt was difficult in her interview with you yesterday, but it’s our business to deal with difficulties in a diplomatic manner. Certainly we should never permit our personal feelings to become engaged, no matter how trying the circumstances, and I strongly suspect that you are bearing Miss Tritt a grudge merely because she was—er, guilty of a misrepresentation. I assure you I am not trying to suggest—”

“Nuts.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I just said nuts.” Cramer took his cigar from his mouth. “I’m not a microphone, I’m only a police inspector. You don’t have to make a speech, just say what you mean, that people who are in a position to make trouble have to be handled differently from those who aren’t. I know that, and I try to string along, whether I like it or not. I have to. Sure, I admitted this probably has nothing to do with the murder, but it was in the investigation of a murder that Miss Tritt concealed something that we had a right to be curious about, not counting her phoney alibi for Guy Carew. Also I admit my personal feelings are a little bit engaged; I’m a man and I’ve got ’em. But the chief point is this: How would you like to have the Carew case go to trial, and the state’s case in and the
tabloids hitting new circulation highs, and then explode and blow the roof right off the courthouse? I know it’s Anderson’s case, not ours, but we wrapped it up and delivered it to him, and everybody knows it. That’s what’s on my mind ahead of any personal feelings. Yesterday I would have given 100 to 1 that Guy Carew was guilty and could be convicted. Right now I’d give 93 to 1, or maybe 92. I don’t like the loss of that 7 or 8 points, and my intention is to look into it.”

Cramer stuck his cigar in his mouth and took it out again. “The commissioner here is my superior officer. If he orders me to apologise to Miss Tritt and send her home, I’ll—I’ll send her home. Otherwise I’ll ask her some questions, and I’ll get answers.”

“I haven’t suggested that you send her home! It’s perfectly proper to question her, of course! I only say—”

Humbert broke in, “Why don’t both of you cut it out? Good God, it’s after three o’clock! Where is she, Cramer?”

“Third floor.”

“Is Kranz there too?”

“Yes.”

“Well, have them brought down here. Both of them.”

“I strongly advise—I want her first.”

“Do you really think it’s as important as that?”

“No, sir. But it may be.”

Humbert picked up his highball, and sighed. “All right. Send for her.”

Cramer went to the telephone on its bracket and asked for Extension 19.

Portia Tritt wore a dull-green street dress, nearly to her ankles, with hat and pumps of black patent leather and a black lightweight summer wrap, faced with the dull
green of the dress. She came in a few paces and stopped. Cramer and Humbert arose. Skinner crossed to her and they shook hands. Commissioner Humbert was introduced, and a chair was placed for her. She was quite gracious and amiable, considering the serious inconvenience she had been compelled to submit to. Cramer sat again, with his lips screwed up. Skinner took a chair to her left and told her:

“Dick Elliott phoned me and I came right down. We’re sorry you had to wait so long, but the inspector was busy with some malefactors and we didn’t dare interrupt him.”

She smiled. “I imagine the inspector deals with so many malefactors that he hardly knows how to act with commonplace people like me.” She turned to Cramer, with the smile intact. “Isn’t that so?”

Cramer unscrewed his lips. “Maybe it is, ma’am. I’d never thought of it.” He turned to the commissioner. “Do I proceed, sir?”

Humber nodded. “Go ahead.”

She repeated the smile. “More questions, Inspector?”

“Yeah, a few.” He shifted in his chair to face her better. “I’m going to begin, Miss Tritt, with a couple of remarks. The district attorney here has just accused me of having personal feelings about you, meaning that I’m sore. All right, I am, I admit it, and I’d like to explain why. You gave us a phoney alibi for Guy Carew. Okay. I’ve busted hundreds of phoney alibis, it’s part of the day’s work. Yesterday afternoon you made it tough going for me every step of the way, and I wasn’t sore about that; I hadn’t supposed you were a jellyfish. But I gave you a good deal. You could have been held and charged without any trouble at all, but I let you go. This minute you could be, and you should be, out on bail, bonded for an appearance, but I let you go. In spite of that, what do
you do? Two things. First, you get a bunch of your friends to phone the mayor and the commissioner and the district attorney and maybe the superintendent of sewers in an effort to tie knots in my tail. My tail don’t bend that easy. Second, even worse, when you left my office yesterday, going with no strings attached on account of my generosity, you were still holding out on me. So I’m sore, I admit it, but I didn’t get you down here to satisfy a personal grudge. I sent for you to tell you that you’re through holding out. This time I want all the facts you’ve got.”

Portia Tritt smiled at him, let the other two have a taste of it, and then gave it back to the inspector. “Really,” she said, “I’m over thirty years old. You’d find some of my facts pretty dull.”

“We’ll skip those. We’ll skip all that aren’t connected with the Carew murder. Here’s the first one I want: What did you do with the duplicate key you had made for the door of the tomb Carew was found murdered in?”

The smile disappeared. It didn’t return; but her composure did short of two seconds. Her voice was almost good enough: “What makes you think I had one?”

“Not any personal feeling,” Cramer asserted dryly. “Maybe you think I was trying to take you by surprise, but I wasn’t, because I don’t have to. I’m not really asking you for facts, because I already have them; what I want from you is an explanation of them. On Sunday, June 27, nine days before Carew was killed, Richards, his valet, gave you two wax impressions of the key to the tomb. You had furnished the wax. You paid him two hundred dollars, and a few days later you paid him the balance to make up the thousand you had promised. Right?”

The smile was gone for good. One of her hands was
clenching the edge of the black and green wrap. She swallowed before she said, “No.”

He shook his head. “No good, Miss Tritt. Richards is upstairs. Shall I have him brought down here?”

“No.”

“But I’ll have to if you don’t admit it, which is the only sensible thing for you to do. Did you—no, wait a minute. I’ll empty the whole bag for you. I’ll admit that I have no proof that you actually had a key made. So I’ll ask you that. Did you have a key made from the wax impressions you bought from Richards?”

“No.”

“Okay.” He turned abruptly to the commissioner. “I wish to detain Miss Tritt in custody—remembering that she was responsible for the fake alibi for Guy Carew—until to-morrow noon. At eight in the morning I’ll send out squads with photographs of that key to all locksmiths she would be likely to go to. By ten o’clock we ought to know who made one for her.”

Humbert frowned. Skinner demanded, “Why keep her in custody? She won’t murder the locksmith. I thought you had proof—”

Cramer, disregarding him, addressed his superior: “May I keep her?”

Humbert pursed his lips. Then he leaned forward: “Look here, Miss Tritt. Don’t be stubborn when it can’t help you. If you did have a key made we’re bound to know it by noon to-morrow, and you won’t have helped yourself any by the delay. Inspector Cramer was perfectly correct when he said he was generous to let you go yesterday. I’m afraid you can’t count on much more generosity. If you did have a key made I would certainly advise you to say so. Did you?”

She looked at him, but not at Skinner. After a moment
she jerked her shoulders back, breathed, and turned to the inspector. “Yes,” she said.

“You got a key to the tomb?”

“Yes.”

“When did you use it?”

“I never used it.”

“What did you get it for?”

“I got it—” She swallowed. “What I got it for has nothing to do with the murder you are investigating. It was—it was silly. Just something to surprise and please Mr. Carew. It was purely personal between him and me.”

“What was it?”

She shook her head. “I assure you—I give you my word—it had nothing to do with the murder.”

“Will you tell what it was?”

“No.”

Cramer leaned back with a sigh. “You make it tough, Miss Tritt, and you really shouldn’t. We might all be out of here, and you on your way home, in five minutes, if you’d say what it was and get it over. Since it had nothing to do with the murder. You see, you’re in this thing. You’re in it for good. You’ll be on the stand at Guy Carew’s trial, there’s no way out of it. If you tell us now when and why you used that key, and it had no connection with the murder, it won’t come up at the trial at all, and will never be made public. If you don’t tell us, you’ll be questioned about it on the stand. If you tell on the stand, you may or may not be believed because there’ll be no chance to check up. If you refuse to tell on the stand, everybody, including the judge and jury, will think the key was connected with the murder, and you may find yourself on the spot.”

Portia Tritt’s eyes were intent at him. She said calmly, “They can’t think the key was connected with
the murder. The door was unlocked when the murderer went in.”

“Who said so?” Cramer demanded. “That has been the assumption up till now, because no one knew anything about a duplicate key. It wouldn’t be hard to suppose that the murderer got there before Carew did, knocked the Indian out and bound and gagged him, let himself into the tomb and locked the door on the inside—”

“No,” the district attorney put in. “Carew would have seen—”

Cramer cut him off with a murderous glare. “Damn it, is this a departmental conference or an investigation?” He returned to the charge: “I don’t know if you are aware, Miss Tritt, that your attempt to manufacture an alibi for Guy Carew has already put you in a difficult position. That’s a mild word for it. People don’t often hear gossip about themselves, so you may not have heard the latest public morsel, that you and Guy Carew conspired to kill Val Carew so you two could get married and enjoy the fortune—”

“That’s a lie!”

“I expect it is. But you’re not in much of a position to get indignant about a lie. And you must admit it’s logical. If you add to the other facts a new one, that you got a key to the tomb and refuse to tell what you used it for, I tell you frankly, it may get to be worse than gossip.” He leaned to her. “You haven’t asked for my advice and maybe you don’t want it, but take it from me, you are already carrying a peak load on this murder and another few pounds might break your back.”