“At least I try.”
He didn’t hear it. He was in the kind of condition when you’re so concentrated on what you want to say that nothing anyone else says can get in.
“I’m in one hell of a squeeze,” he said. “I’m stuck. First I ought to tell you, I don’t owe Kenneth and Dolly Brooke anything. They don’t owe me anything, either. I met them through Susan, about three years ago. I only knew them, I only kept knowing them and seeing them, on account of her. So I don’t feel— Wait a minute. I didn’t say this is confidential. It is.”
I shook my head. “Not if it connects up with murder. I mustn’t make liars of the men who told you I’m straight. Put it this way: nothing you tell me will be disclosed unless it has to be in order to nail a murderer. Everything else is, and will stay, confidential. Is that plain?”
“Yes.” A muscle at the side of his neck was twitching. “I suppose... All right. I admit I’m thinking of me. I lied to the police.”
“If I had a dime for every lie I’ve told them I’d be on my yacht in the Caribbean. What is it you don’t feel?”
“What?”
“You said, ‘I don’t feel,’ and stopped.”
“I don’t— Oh. Yes. I don’t feel that there’s any question of loyalty. I don’t owe them any loyalty. I said I’m thinking of me, and I am, but the trouble is I have a conscience. That’s an old-fashioned word, and I’m not religious, but I don’t know what else to call it. That’s why I haven’t been able to sleep. What I can’t stand— You remember, when we were here Friday evening, we tried to get Wolfe to tell us why he thinks that man is innocent, and he wouldn’t. I want you to tell me why. Confidentially. Just for me.”
It was beginning to sound promising. What was eating him might be something we could use, and the odds had at least doubled that he wasn’t it. I made an effort. “If it would get you some sleep,” I said, “I wish I could tell you. But if I did, people would no longer call me straight. Dunbar Whipple is Nero Wolfe’s client, and I work for Nero Wolfe. But look at it. You read that piece in the Gazette. Mr. Wolfe has never taken a murder suspect for a client if he thought there was any chance that he was guilty. He knows Whipple is innocent. So do I. The only way he can prove it is to get the murderer. That’s all I can tell you or your conscience.”
He kept trying to focus on me without blinking. “I can’t stand it,” he said, “and I don’t intend to. An innocent man convicted of murder because I didn’t have the guts...” He shut his eyes tight and jerked his head from side to side.
“Look,” I said, “let’s get down to cases. What did you lie to the police about?”
“About where I was. That evening. I lied to Wolfe too. I wasn’t at the club all evening. I left right after dinner and was gone for more than two hours.”
My lips parted to say “Where did you go?” but it didn’t get out. I don’t know what stopped it. You never know where a hunch comes from; if you did it wouldn’t be a hunch. I took three seconds to look at it, liked it, and said, “Sure. You went and baby-sat for Dolly Brooke while she went and got her car and went for a ride.”
It stopped the blinks. He stared. “How in the name of...”
I grinned at him. “You have just heard a detective detect. I knew that she had got the car from the garage around a quarter to eight and returned about an hour and a half later. I doubted if she would leave an eight-year-old alone in the apartment. You come and make a big point of not owing them any loyalty and then say you lied about where you were that evening. So I detect.” I turned a palm up. “Simple. Now that the beans are spilled, let’s use the broom. Where did she go in the car?”
He still wasn’t blinking. “So you knew. I didn’t need... I’m a damn fool. How did you find out?”
“Confidential information. We respect confidences, including yours. Where did—”
“Did you know when we were here? Friday?”
“No. We got it last night. Where did she go in the car?”
“I didn’t need to come.” He got to his feet, none too steady. “You already knew.” He turned and was going.
I moved and was between him and the door. “Now you’re a damn fool,” I told him. “The only question is would you rather tell me or the police.”
He was blinking again. “You said you respect confidences.”
“Nuts. You know what I said. We would prefer to tell the police nothing, about you or anyone else, until we can name the murderer, but you’re not leaving until either (a) you answer my questions or (b) I get a cop here and you answer his questions. Take your pick.”
He didn’t size me up. He stood and blinked at me, but not to decide if he could rush me. He was contemplating the situation, not me. I let him take his time. Finally he turned, not too sure of his legs, walked back to the chair, and sat. Back in my chair, I asked him, not demanding, just wanting to know, “Where did she go in the car?”
“If I tell you that,” he said, “I ought to tell you all about it.”
“Fine. Go ahead.”
He took a while to decide where to start. “You know I was going to marry Susan.”
“If that’s the way you want to put it, yes.”
“That’s exactly the way I want to put it. We knew about that apartment. We all knew — her mother, Kenneth, Dolly, and I. We knew she was emotionally involved in the civil rights movement. Her mother and Dolly thought she was also emotionally involved with that man, Dunbar Whipple, but I didn’t. I thought I understood Susan, and I still think so. You don’t think so, do you?”
There was no point to rubbing salt in. “I don’t count. I didn’t know her. All I want is to get a murderer.”
“Well, I knew her. I understood her. Her mother and Dolly kept saying I ought to do something, but I thought it was better just to let her work her way through it. They kept harping about that apartment and the disgrace, the scandal, Susan would bring on the family. Then about a month ago Dolly said if I wouldn’t do something she would. She didn’t tell Kenneth because she knew he wouldn’t approve, but she told me. Some evening when Kenneth was staying at the laboratory Mother Brooke would come and stay with the boy, and she would go up there and see what was going on. In one way I didn’t approve either, but in another way I did, because I thought she would find there was nothing wrong. You see the situation?”
I only nodded. What a situation for a grown man with a brain supposedly in working order. I wasn’t thinking of color; that was an unimportant detail.
“All right,” he said, “that’s how it was. That evening, that Monday evening, I got a phone call as I was eating dinner at the club. It was Dolly. Mother Brooke couldn’t come because she was sick, and Dolly wanted me to come and stay with the boy. I suppose I should have refused, but — anyway, I went. I got there a little after eight. She left right away, and—”
“Hold it. Our information is that she got the car from the garage about a quarter to eight.”
“Then your information is wrong. She left the house about ten after, and the garage is four blocks away. My God, do you think I don’t know? When I know what happened? When I’ve been over it and over it a thousand times?”
“Okay, you know.”
“God knows I do. Give her ten minutes to get to the garage and get the car, and ten more to One Hundred and Twenty-eighth Street, and—”
“Maybe not enough. Fifteen.”
“No. Straight up Park Avenue and across, nothing to it at that time in the evening. I drove it and timed it twice yesterday. Nine minutes both times, and I didn’t push. So she got there just after half past eight, out of the car and to the building. She went up the two flights and stood at the door of the apartment a few minutes, listening. She didn’t hear anything, and she knocked on the door and then stood some more, and then knocked again, and nothing happened. I’m telling you what she told me. She went down and stood across the street, and pretty soon Dunbar Whipple came and entered the building. She wanted—”