She opened her eyes wide. “What should I tell him?”
I went out and shut the door.
24
Nora, looking a little sleepy, was entertaining Guild and Andy in the living-room. The Wynant offspring were not in sight. “Go ahead,” I told Guild. “First door to the left. I think she’s readied up for you.”
“Crack her?” he asked. I nodded.
“What’d you get?”
“See what you get and we’ll put them together and see how they add up,” I suggested.
“O. K. Come on, Andy.” They went out.
“Where’s Dorothy?” I asked.
Nora yawned. “I thought she was with you and her mother. Gilbert’s around somewhere. He was here till a few minutes ago. Do we have to hang around long?”
“Not long.” I went back down the passageway past Mimi’s door to another bedroom door, which was open, and looked in. Nobody was there. A door facing it was shut. I knocked on it.
Dorothy’s voice said: “What is it?”
“Nick,” I said and went in. She was lying on her side on a bed, dressed except for her slippers. Gilbert was sitting on the bed beside her. Her mouth seemed a little puffy, but it may have been from crying: her eyes were red. She raised her head to stare sullenly at me.
“Still want to talk to me?” I asked.
Gilbert got up from the bed. “Where’s Mamma?”
“Talking to the police.” He said something I did not catch and left the room.
Dorothy shuddered. “He gives me the creeps,” she cried, and then remembered to stare sullenly at me again.
“Still want to talk to me?”
“What made you turn against me like that?”
“You’re being silly.” I sat down where Gilbert had been sitting. “Do you know anything about this knife and chain your mother’s supposed to have found?”
“No. Where?”
“What’d you want to tell me?”
“Nothing—now,” she said disagreeably, “except you might at least wipe her lipstick off your mouth.” I wiped it off. She snatched the handkerchief from my hand and rolled over to pick up a package of matches from the table on that side of the bed. She struck a match.
“That’s going to stink like hell,” I said.
She said, “I don’t care,” but she blew out the match. I took the handkerchief, went to a window, opened it, dropped the handkerchief out, shut the window, and went back to my seat on the bed. “If that makes you feel any better.”
“What did Mamma say—about me?”
“She said you’re in love with me.”
She sat up abruptly. “What did you say?”
“I said you just liked me from when you were a kid.”
Her lower lip twitched. “Do—do you think that’s what it is?”
“What else could it be?”
“I don’t know.” She began to cry. “Everybody’s made so much fun about it—Mamma and Gilbert and Harrison—I—”
I put my arms around her. “To hell with them.”
After a while she asked: “Is Mamma in love with you?”
“Good God, no! She hates men more than any woman I’ve ever known who wasn’t a Lesbian.”
“But she’s always having some sort of—”
“That’s the body. Don’t let it fool you. Mimi hates men—all of us—bitterly.”
She had stopped crying. She wrinkled her forehead and said: “I don’t understand. Do you hate her?”
“Not as a rule.”
“Now?”
“I don’t think so. She’s being stupid and she’s sure she’s being very clever, and that’s a nuisance, but I don’t think I hate her.”
“I do,” Dorothy said.
“So you told me last week. Something I meant to ask you: did you know or did you ever see the Arthur Nunheim we were talking about in the speakeasy tonight?”
She looked sharply at me. “You’re just trying to change the subject.”
“I want to know. Did you?”
“No.”
“He was mentioned in the newspapers,” I reminded her. “He was the one who told the police about Morelli knowing Julia Wolf.”
“I didn’t remember his name,” she said. “I don’t remember ever having heard it until tonight.”
I described him. “Ever see him?”
“No.”
“He may have been known as Albert Norman sometimes. Does that sound familiar?”
“No.”
“Know any of the people we saw at Studsy’s tonight? Or anything about them?”
“No. Honestly, Nick, I’d tell you if I knew anything at all that might help you.”
“No matter who it hurt?”
“Yes,” she said immediately, then, “What do you mean?”
“You know damned well what I mean.”
She put her hands over her face, and her words were barely audible: “I’m afraid, Nick. I—” She jerked her hands down as someone knocked on the door.
“All right,” I called.
Andy opened the door far enough to stick his head in. He tried to keep curiosity from showing in his face while saying: “The Lieutenant wants to see you.”
“Be right out,” I promised.
He opened the door wider. “He’s waiting.” He gave me what was probably meant to be a significant wink, but a corner of his mouth moved more than his eye did and the result was a fairly startling face.
“I’ll be back,” I told Dorothy, and followed him out.
He shut the door behind me and put his mouth close to my ear. “The kid was at the keyhole,” he muttered.
“Gilbert?”
“Yep. He had time to get away from it when he heard me coming, but he was there, right enough.”
“That’s mild for him,” I said. “How’d you all make out with Mrs. J.?”
He puckered his thick lips up in an o and blew breath out noisily. “What a dame!”
25
We went into Mimi’s bedroom. She was sitting in a deep chair by a window looking very pleased with herself. She smiled gayly at me and said: “My soul is spotless now. I’ve confessed everything.”
Guild stood by a table wiping his face with a handkerchief. There were still some drops of sweat on his temples, and his face seemed old and tired. The knife and chain, and the handkerchief they had been wrapped in, were on the table. “Finished?” I asked.
“I don’t know, and that’s a fact,” he said. He turned his head to address Mimi: “Would you say we were finished?”
Mimi laughed. “I can’t imagine what more there would be.”
“Well,” Guild said slowly, somewhat reluctantly, “in that case I guess I’d like to talk to Mr. Charles, if you’ll excuse us for a couple of minutes.” He folded his handkerchief carefully and put it in his pocket.
“You can talk here.” She got up from the chair. “I’ll go out and talk to Mrs. Charles till you’re through.” She tapped my cheek playfully with the tip of a forefinger as she passed me. “Don’t let them say too horrid things about me, Nick.” Andy opened the door for her, shut it behind her, and made the o and the blowing noise again.
I lay down on the bed. “Well,” I asked, “what’s what?”
Guild cleared his throat. “She told us about finding this here chain and knife on the floor where the Wolf dame had most likely broke it off fighting with Wynant, and she told us the reasons why she’d hid it till now. Between me and you, that don’t make any too much sense, looking at it reasonably, but maybe that ain’t the way to look at it in this case. To tell you the plain truth, I don’t know what to make of her in a lot of ways, I don’t for a fact.”
“The chief thing,” I advised them, “is not to let her tire you out. When you catch her in a lie, she admits it and gives you another lie to take its place and, when you catch her in that one, admits it and gives you still another, and so on. Most people—even women—get discouraged after you’ve caught them in the third or fourth straigh
t lie and fall back on either the truth or silence, but not Mimi. She keeps trying and you’ve got to be careful or you’ll find yourself believing her, not because she seems to be telling the truth, but simply because you’re tired of disbelieving her.”
Guild said: “Hm-m-m. Maybe.” He put a finger inside his collar. He seemed very uncomfortable. “Look here, do you think she killed that dame?”
I discovered that Andy was staring at me so intently that his eyes bulged. I sat up and put my feet on the floor. “I wish I knew. That chain business looks like a plant, all right, but … We can find out whether he had a chain like that, maybe whether he still has it. If she remembered the chain as well as she said she did, there’s no reason why she couldn’t have told a jeweler how to make one, and anybody can buy a knife and have any initials they want engraved on it. There’s plenty to be said against the probability of her having gone that far. If she did plant it, it’s more likely she had the original chain—maybe she’s had it for years—but all that’s something for you folks to check up.”
“We’re doing the best we can,” Guild said patiently. “So you do think she did it?”
“The murder?” I shook my head. “I haven’t got that far yet. How about Nunheim? Did the bullets match up?”
“They did—from the same gun as was used on the dame—all five of them.”
“He was shot five times?”
“He was, and close enough to burn his clothes.”
“I saw his girl, the big red-head, tonight in a speak,” I told him. “She’s saying you and I killed him because he knew too much.”
He said: “Hm-m-m. What speak was that? I might want to talk to her.”
“Studsy Burke’s Pigiron Club,” I said, and gave him the address. “Morelli hangs out there too. He tells me Julia Wolf’s real name is Nancy Kane and she has a boy friend doing time in Ohio—Face Peppler.”
From the tone of Guild’s “Yes?” I imagined he had already found out about Peppier and about Julia’s past. “And what else did you pick up in your travels?”
“A friend of mine—Larry Crowley, a press agent—saw Jorgensen coming out of a hock-shop on Sixth near Forty-sixth yesterday afternoon.”
“Yes?”
“You don’t seem to get excited about my news. I’m—”
Mimi opened the door and came in with glasses, whisky, and mineral water on a tray. “I thought you’d like a drink,” she said cheerfully. We thanked her.
She put the tray on the table, said, “I don’t mean to interrupt,” smiled at us with that air of amused tolerance which women like to affect towards male gatherings, and went out.
“You were saying something,” Guild reminded me.
“Just that if you people think I’m not coming clean with you, you ought to say so. We’ve been playing along together so far and I wouldn’t want—”
“No, no,” Guild said hastily, “it’s nothing like that, Mr. Charles.” His face had reddened a little. “I been—The fact is the Commissioner’s been riding us for action and I guess I been kind of passing it on. This second murder’s made things tough.” He turned to the tray on the table. “How’ll you have yours?”
“Straight, thanks. No leads on it?”
“Well, the same gun and a lot of bullets, same as with her, but that’s about all. It was a rooming-house hallway in between a couple stores. Nobody there claims they know Nunheim or Wynant or anybody else we can connect. The door’s left unlocked, anybody could walk in, but that don’t make too much sense when you come to think of it.”
“Nobody saw or heard anything?”
“Sure, they heard the shooting, but they didn’t see anybody doing it.” He gave me a glass of whisky.
“Find any empty shells?” I asked.
He shook his head. “Neither time. Probably a revolver.”
“And he emptied it both times—counting the shot that hit her telephone—if, like a lot of people, he carried an empty chamber under the hammer.”
Guild lowered the glass he was raising towards his mouth. “You’re not trying to find a Chinese angle on it, are you,” he complained, “just because they shoot like that?”
“No, but any kind of angle would help some. Find out where Nunheim was the afternoon the girl was killed?”
“Uh-huh. Hanging around the girl’s building—part of the time anyhow. He was seen in front and he was seen in back, if you’re going to believe people that didn’t think much of it at the time and haven’t got any reason for lying about it. And the day before the killing he had been up to her apartment, according to an elevator boy. The boy says he came down right away and he don’t know whether he got in or not.”
I said: “So. Maybe Miriam’s right, maybe he did know too much. Find out anything about the four-thousand difference between what Macaulay gave her and what Clyde Wynant says he got from her?”
“No.”
“Morelli says she always had plenty of money. He says she once lent him five thousand in cash.”
Guild raised his eyebrows. “Yes?”
“Yes. He also says Wynant knew about her record.”
“Seems to me,” Guild said slowly, “Morelli did a lot of talking to you.”
“He likes to talk. Find out anything more about what Wynant was working on when he left, or what he was going away to work on?”
“No. You’re kind of interested in that shop of his.”
“Why not? He’s an inventor, the shop’s his place. I’d like to have a look at it some time.”
“Help yourself. Tell me some more about Morelli, and how you go about getting him to open up.”
“He likes to talk. Do you know a fellow called Sparrow? A big fat pale fellow with a pansy voice?”
Guild frowned. “No. Why?”
“He was there—with Miriam—and wanted to take a crack at me, but they wouldn’t let him.”
“And what’d he want to do that for?”
“I don’t know. Maybe because she told him I helped knock Nunheim off—helped you.”
Guild said: “Oh.” He scratched his chin with a thumbnail, looked at his watch. “It’s getting kind of late. Suppose you drop in and see me some time tomorrow—today.”
I said, “Sure,” instead of the things I was thinking, nodded at him and Andy, and went out to the living-room.
Nora was sleeping on the sofa. Mimi put down the book she was reading and asked: “Is the secret session over?”
“Yes.” I moved towards the sofa.
Mimi said: “Let her sleep awhile, Nick. You’re going to stay till after your police friends have gone, aren’t you?”
“All right. I want to see Dorothy again.”
“But she’s asleep.”
“That’s all right. I’ll wake her up.”
“But—” Guild and Andy came in, said their goodnights, Guild looked regretfully at the sleeping Nora, and they left.
Mimi sighed. “I’m tired of policemen,” she said. “You remember that story?”
“Yes.”
Gilbert came in. “Do they really think Chris did it?”
“No,” I said.
“Who do they think?”
“I could’ve told you yesterday. I can’t today.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Mimi protested. “They know very well and you know very well that Clyde did it.” When I said nothing she repeated, more sharply: “You know very well that Clyde did it.”
“He didn’t,” I said.
An expression of triumph brightened Mimi’s face. “You are working for him, now aren’t you?” My “No” bounced off her with no effect whatever.
Gilbert asked, not argumentatively, but as if he wanted to know: “Why couldn’t he?”
“He could’ve, but he didn’t. Would he have written those letters throwing suspicion on Mimi, the one person who’s helping him by hiding the chief evidence against him?”
“But maybe he didn’t know that. Maybe he thought the police were simply not telling all they knew. They oft
en do that, don’t they? Or maybe he thought he could discredit her, so they wouldn’t believe her if—”
“That’s it,” Mimi said. “That’s exactly what he did, Nick.”
I said to Gilbert: “You don’t think he killed her.”
“No, I don’t think he did, but I’d like to know why you don’t think so—you know—your method.”
“And I’d like to know yours.”
His face flushed a little and there was some embarrassment in his smile. “Oh, but I—it’s different.”
“He knows who killed her,” Dorothy said from the doorway. She was still dressed. She stared at me fixedly, as if afraid to look at anybody else. Her face was pale and she held her small body stiffly erect.
Nora opened her eyes, pushed herself up on an elbow, and asked, “What?” sleepily. Nobody answered her.
Mimi said: “Now, Dorry, don’t let’s have one of those idiotic dramatic performances.”
Dorothy said: “You can beat me after they’ve gone. You will.” She said it without taking her eyes off mine. Mimi tried to look as if she did not know what her daughter was talking about.
“Who does he know killed her?” I asked.
Gilbert said: “You’re making an ass of yourself, Dorry, you’re—”
I interrupted him: “Let her. Let her say what she’s got to say. Who killed her, Dorothy?”
She looked at her brother and lowered her eyes and no longer held herself erect. Looking at the floor, she said indistinctly: “I don’t know. He knows.” She raised her eyes to mine and began to tremble. “Can’t you see I’m afraid?” she cried. “I’m afraid of them. Take me away and I’ll tell you, but I’m afraid of them.”
Mimi laughed at me. “You asked for it. It serves you right.”
Gilbert was blushing. “It’s so silly,” he mumbled.
I said: “Sure, I’ll take you away, but I’d like to have it out now while we’re all together.”
Dorothy shook her head. “I’m afraid.”
Mimi said: “I wish you wouldn’t baby her so, Nick. It only makes her worse. She—”
I asked Nora: “What do you say?”