Might as Well Be Dead (12 page)

“Right away. We got the license today. Next week.”

“Congratulations. You’re a lucky man, Mr. Lesser. How long have you known her?”

“About a year. A little over. Now are you going to tell me what I asked?”

“I have no objection.” I crossed my legs and leaned back. “This may ease your mind a little, the fact that the magazine wouldn’t dream of printing anything Miss Brandt disapproved of, or anything her husband disapproved of. Invasion of privacy. And you’ve given me an idea. The article would be a lot better with some real love interest. You know what the slant is, the last ten months of a murder victim as seen by his secretary. Well, all the time she is working for him, and letting him take her out to dinner because she feels sorry for him, her heart is already in bond to another. She is deeply in love with a young man she intends to marry. That would make it a masterpiece—the contrast between the tragedy of the man who is going to die but doesn’t know it, and the blush and promise of young love. Huh?”

“I guess so. What did she tell you?”

“Don’t worry about that.” I waved it away. “When it’s written you and she can change anything you don’t like, or take it out. When were you engaged?”

“Well—it was understood quite a while ago.”

“Before the murder?”

“Formally engaged, no. Does that matter?”

“Maybe not. While she’s being sorry for Molloy she can either be promised to another or just hoping she soon will be. It would be swell if we could work in some reference, a sort of minor key, to the murderer. We could call him that, since he’s been convicted. Only I don’t suppose you knew Peter Hays.”

“No.”

“Did you know about him? Did you know he was in love with Mrs. Molloy?”

“No. I never heard of him until he was arrested.”

“It doesn’t really matter. I thought perhaps Miss Brandt had mentioned him to you. Of course Molloy told her about him.”

“How do you know he did? Did she say so?”

“I don’t remember.” I considered. “I’d have to look at my notes, and they’re not here. Did she tell you about Molloy asking her to go to South America with him?”

“No, she didn’t.” Lesser was looking aggressive again. “I didn’t come to tell you what she told me, I came to ask you what she told you.”

“I know you did.” I was sympathetic. “But you have my word that nothing will be printed that you don’t like, and that’s what you were concerned about. I can’t tell you about my talk with Miss Brandt because I was working for a client and my report of that talk is his property. But I think—”

“Then you’re not going to tell me.”

“I’d like to, but I can’t. But I think—”

He got up and walked out. From the back he looked even thinner than from the front. I went to the hall to be polite, but he already had his coat off the rack and was reaching for the doorknob. He banged the door shut behind him, and I returned to the office. The wall clock said twenty-five to six. Delia Brandt might have got home from work, or, since she had gone with Lesser to get their marriage license, she might have taken the day off. I got at the phone and dialed the number of her apartment. No answer.

I thought him over. There was one nice thing about him, he had had the makings of a motive, which was more than I could say for anyone else on the list. And he might easily have known enough about Peter Hays to get the idea of framing him for it. But how could he have arranged for Fanny Irwin to have a headache and stay home, and for Rita Arkoff to invite Selma Molloy to use the ticket? Even if that wasn’t essential, if he was merely waiting for an opportunity to knock, how did he know it was knocking? How did he know Mrs. Molloy was away from the apartment and would stay away? It was worth looking for answers to those questions, because there was another nice thing about him: a wife cannot be summoned to testify against her husband.

I dialed Delia Brandt’s number again, and got her.

“I’ve just heard a piece of news,” I told her. “That you’re going to be married. I’m calling you to wish you luck, and happiness, and everything that goes with it.”

“Oh, thank you! Thank you very much. Is Bill there with you?”

“No, he left a few minutes ago. A fine young man. It was a pleasure to meet him. Apparently he was a little worried about the magazine article, but I promised him he would have a chance to veto anything he didn’t like. So you knew he was coming to see me?”

“Oh, sure. He said he wanted to, and I thought since he was going to be my husband it was only natural. Did you tell him everything—what did you tell him?”

It didn’t look like paradise to me, him wanting to know what she had told me, and her wanting to know what I had told him, and they weren’t even married yet. “Nothing much,” I assured her. “Really nothing. After the promise I gave him it wasn’t necessary. Oh, by the way, now that I have you on the phone, I missed one bit entirely last night. At the end of the article, a sort of a climax, you ought to tell where you were and what you were doing the evening of January third. At the very minute Molloy was murdered, just after nine o’clock, if you remember. Do you?”

“Certainly I do. I was with Bill. We were dining and dancing at the Dixie Bower. We didn’t leave until after midnight.”

“That’s wonderful. That will fit right in with an idea I had and told Bill about, how all the time you were trying to be nice to Molloy because you were sorry for him you were deeply in love with a young man who—”

She cut me off. “Oh, the bell’s ringing! It must be Bill.”

A little click and she was gone. It didn’t matter much, since there was soon an interruption at my end. I had just hung up when the sound came of Wolfe’s elevator descending, and he had just entered and was crossing to his desk when the doorbell rang and I had to go to the hall to receive the company. I have already told about that, about Rita Arkoff ordering her mate to hang up his hat, and about Tom Irwin moving his chair next to his wife’s and holding her hand. But, looking back, I see that I haven’t mentioned Selma Molloy. I could go back and insert her, but I don’t care to cover up. I am not responsible for my subconscious, and if it arranged, without my knowing it, to leave Selma out because it didn’t want you to know how it felt about her, that’s its lookout. I now put her back in. Around five o’clock she had returned from her errand at Parker’s office, and, at Wolfe’s suggestion, had gone up to the plant rooms to look at the orchids. He had brought her down with him, and she was sitting in the red leather chair, after greeting her friends. Try again, subconscious.

Chapter 11

T
HE EXCHANGE OF GREETINGS between Selma and the quartet had seemed a little cramped for old friends, but that might have been expected. After all, she was aiding and abetting a program that might lead to one of them getting charged with murder, and they had been invited by her to the office of a well-known private detective. When they had got seated she sent her eyes to Wolfe and kept them there. Their eyes were more interested in her than in Wolfe. I concentrated on them.

Selma’s descriptions of Tom and Jerry had been adequate and accurate. Jerome Arkoff was big and broad, taller than me, and so solemn it must have hurt, but it could have been the ulcers that hurt. Tom Irwin, with his dark skin and thin little clipped mustache, looked more like a saxophone artist than a printing executive, even while holding his wife’s hand. His wife, Fanny, was obviously not at her best, with her face giving the impression that she was trying not to give in to a raging headache, but even so she was no eyesore. Under favorable conditions she would have been very decorative. She was a blonde, and a headache is much harder on a blonde than on a brunette; some brunettes are actually improved by a mild one. This brunette, Rita Arkoff, didn’t need one. There was a faint touch of snake hips in her walk, a faint suggestion of slant at the corners of her eyes, and a faint hint of a pout in the set of her well-tinted lips. But an order-giver …

Wolfe’s eyes went from the Arkoffs on his left to the Irwins on the right. “I don’t presume,” he said, “to thank you for coming, since it was at Mrs. Molloy’s request. She has told you what I’m after. Mr. Albert Freyer, counsel for Peter Hays, wishes to establish a basis for a retrial or an appeal, and I’m trying to help him. I assume you are all in sympathy with that?”

They exchanged glances. “Sure we are,” Jerome Arkoff declared. “If you can find one. Is there any chance?”

“I think so.” Wolfe was easy and relaxed. “Certain aspects have not been thoroughly investigated—not by the police because of the overwhelming evidence against Peter Hays, and not by Mr. Freyer because he lacked funds and facilities. They deserve—”

“Does he have funds now?” Tom Irwin asked. His voice didn’t fit his physique. You would have expected a squeak, but it was a deep baritone.

“No. My interest has been engaged, no matter how, and I am indulging it. Those aspects deserve inquiry, and last evening I sent a man to look into one of them—a man named Johnny Keems, who worked for me intermittently. He was to learn if there was any possibility that on the evening the murder was committed, January third, the invitation to Mrs. Molloy to join a theater party had been designed with the purpose of getting her out of the way. Of course it didn’t—”

“You sent that man?” Arkoff demanded.

His wife looked reproachfully at her friend. “Selma darling, really! You know perfectly well—”

“If you please!” Wolfe showed her a palm, and his tone sharpened. “Save your resentment for a need; I’m imputing no malignity to any of you. I was about to say, it didn’t have to be designed, since the murderer may have merely seized an opportunity; and if it was designed, it didn’t have to be one of you who designed it. You might have been quite unaware of it. That was what I sent Mr. Keems to find out, and he was to begin by seeing you, all four of you. First on his list was Mrs. Arkoff, since she had phoned the invitation to Mrs. Molloy.” His eyes leveled at Rita. “Did he see you, madam?”

She started to answer, but her husband cut in. “Hold it, Rita.” Apparently he could give orders too. He looked at Wolfe. “What’s the big idea? If you sent him why don’t you ask him? Why drag us down here? Did someone else send him?”

Wolfe nodded. He closed his eyes for a moment, and opened them, and nodded again. “A logical inference, Mr. Arkoff, but wrong. I sent him, but I can’t ask him, because he’s dead. On Riverside Drive in the Nineties, shortly before midnight last night, an automobile hit him and killed him. It’s possible that it was an accident, but I don’t think so. I think he was murdered. I think that, working on the assignment I had given him, he had uncovered something that was a mortal threat to someone. Therefore I must see the people he saw and find out what was said. Did he see you, Mrs. Arkoff?”

Her husband stopped her again. “This is different,” he told Wolfe, and he looked and sounded different. “
If
he was murdered. What makes you think it wasn’t an accident?”

Wolfe shook his head. “We won’t go into that, Mr. Arkoff, and we don’t have to because the police also suspect that it wasn’t. A sergeant at the Homicide Bureau phoned me today to ask if Mr. Keems was working for me last night, and if so, what his assignment was and whom he had seen. Mr. Goodwin put him off—”

“He phoned again later,” I put in.

“Yes? What did you tell him?”

“That we were trying to check and would let him know as soon as we had anything useful.”

Wolfe went back to them. “I wanted to talk with you people myself first. I wanted to learn what you had told Mr. Keems, and whether he had uncovered anything that might have threatened one of you or someone else. I’ll have—”

Fanny Irwin blurted, “He didn’t uncover anything with me!” She had got her hand back from her husband’s hold.

“Then that’s what I’ll learn, madam. I’ll have to tell the police what he was to do and whom he was to see; that can’t be postponed much longer; but it may make things easier for you if I can also tell them that I have talked with you—depending, of course, on what you tell me. Or would you prefer to save it for the police?”

“My God.” Tom Irwin groaned. “This is a nice mess.”

“And we can thank you for it,” Arkoff told Wolfe. “Sicking your damn snoop on us.” His head turned. “And you, Selma. You started it.”

“Let Selma alone,” Rita ordered him. “She’s had a rough time and you can’t blame her.” She looked at Wolfe, and she wasn’t pouting. “Let’s go ahead and get it over with. Yes, your man saw me, at my apartment. He came when I was about ready to leave, to meet my husband for dinner. He said he was investigating the possibility of a new trial for Peter Hays. I thought he was after Selma’s alibi and I told him he might as well save his breath because she was with me every minute, but it was the invitation he wanted to ask about. He asked when I first thought of asking Selma, and I said at the restaurant when Tom phoned and told me Fanny couldn’t make it. He asked why I asked Selma instead of someone else, and I said because I liked her and enjoyed her company, and also because when Tom phoned I asked him if he wanted to suggest anyone and he suggested Selma. He asked if Tom gave any special reason for having Selma, and I said he didn’t have to because I wanted her anyway. He was going to ask more, but I was late and I said that was all I knew anyhow. So that was all—no, he asked when he could see my husband, and I told him we’d be home around ten o’clock and he might see him then.”

“Did he?”

“Yes. We got home a little after ten and he was waiting down in the lobby.”

Wolfe’s eyes moved. “Mr. Arkoff?”

Jerry hesitated, then shrugged. “I talked with him there in the lobby. I didn’t ask him upstairs because I had some scripts to go over. He asked me the same things he had asked my wife, but I couldn’t tell him as much as she had because she had talked with Tom on the phone. I really couldn’t tell him anything. He tried to be clever, asking trick questions about how it was decided to invite Mrs. Molloy, and finally I got fed up and told him to go peddle his papers.”

“Did he say anything about having seen Mr. or Mrs. Irwin?”

“No. I don’t think so. No.”