Jules Weygand stood up. “I’d better move my car then, Sergeant. It’s parked in the hotel loading zone.”
Simms said, “I’ll move it for you, Mr. Weygand, and you can pick up the keys at the desk when you come back. I’ll put it on the hotel lot.”
Weygand handed over the keys and Simms said, “I’ll put Mrs. Hartman’s bag in her room too. It’s 521, Mrs. Hartman.”
“Thank you,” Lydia said.
“Okay, folks,” Sergeant Carter said. “Let’s take a ride over to headquarters.”
Police headquarters was only two blocks away, also on lower Pearl Street. Sergeant Carter ushered them into an elevator, and when they got off upstairs, led them to a door lettered: HOMICIDE AND ARSON. Beyond the door was a large squadroom with several desks in it. The only person in the room was a man in shirtsleeves talking on a phone at one of the desks. Carter seated himself behind another desk on the opposite side of the room and waved Lydia and Weygand to a pair of nearby chairs.
“Smoke?” he asked, extending a pack of cigarettes.
Both Weygand and Lydia shook their heads. Carter lit one for himself, leaned back in his chair and regarded Lydia from beneath his drooping lids.
“I understand the dead man was your husband, Mrs. Hartman. That right?”
Lydia nodded.
“And you’re here from Rochester?”
“That’s right. Jules here too.”
“Uh-huh. What was your husband doing here?”
“Just getting drunk,” she said, flushing slightly. “He’s been doing that recently. But up until this time he’s always holed up in some Rochester hotel.”
“This is just something recent? His drinking, I mean.”
“The last few weeks. He’s been depressed over business matters.”
“Oh? What was his business?”
“Jim and Jules, here, were partners in the Weygand and Hartman Realty Company. They filed for bankruptcy three weeks ago and the company is in receivership. It was all Jim’s fault, really.”
“How’s that?” Carter asked.
“He... he misappropriated some funds. Jules found it out too late to save the business. He’s been wonderful about it. He could have had Jim prosecuted and imprisoned.”
“That wouldn’t have saved anything,” Weygand said dryly, “It would just have sent Jim to jail.
Carter turned his attention to Weygand. “Weren’t you a little sore at your partner?”
“That’s an understatement,” Weygand said in the same dry tone. “I would have sent him to jail if it weren’t for Lydia. I didn’t want to hurt her.”
“Oh? Why so considerate?”
“She hadn’t done anything,” Weygand said reasonably. “And I happen to like her.”
After studying him for a moment, Carter turned back to Lydia. “How’d you know your husband was here in Buffalo?”
“Jules phoned me about five P.M. I had asked him to keep an eye on my husband, because Jim’s been so depressed, I feared he might do something desperate. When Jules said my husband had registered here at the Redmill Hotel, and was having whisky delivered to his room, I took the six P.M. train here. I got in at seven-thirty and Jules met me at the train.”
“Hmm. If you were in Rochester at five P.M., I guess you’re cleared as a suspect.” He swung his gaze back to Weygand. “You verify her story?”
“Of course,” Weygand said in surprise. “You didn’t actually suspect her of doing this thing, did you?”
“The wife is always a routine suspect when a man’s murdered. Now about you. You tailed him here from Rochester, huh?”
“Not exactly. I watched him buy a bus ticket to Buffalo, drove here and picked him up at the bus depot again. When he checked in at the Redmill, I arranged with the desk clerk to let me know if he had any orders sent to his room. When I learned he was having whisky delivered, I phoned Lydia.”
“I see. Seems to me you went to an awful lot of trouble for a guy who’d made you bankrupt.”
Weygand flushed. “I wasn’t doing it for him. It was a favor for Lydia.”
“Kind of fond of her, huh?”
Weygand’s flush deepened. “What are you getting at, Sergeant?”
“I’ll spell it out for you,” Carter said. “Hartman’s wallet was in his hip pocket with sixty-three dollars in it, so the motive wasn’t robbery. He was a stranger here, so it isn’t likely he had any local enemies. You admit you had a grudge against him and you’re fond of his wife. You married, Mr. Weygand?”
After staring at him for a time, Weygand said hotly, “No. But if you’re accusing me—”
“I m not accusing anybody, just yet,” the sergeant interrupted. “I’m just pointing out that you seem to have a couple of good motives, and you tailed him here all the way from Rochester.”
“But that was at my request,” Lydia protested, her face paling. “I was afraid Jim might try to kill himself.”
“Maybe your boy friend was afraid he wouldn’t,” Carter said cynically. “Until we turn up a better suspect, guess we’ll have to hold you a while for investigation, Weygand.”
Jules Weygand puffed up with indignation. But before he could open his mouth, the squadroom door opened and Harry Nicholson walked in. He was carrying a small paper bag in his hand.
As Nicholson approached the, desk, Sergeant Carter said, “Get anything?”
“The lab boys are still lifting prints. The guys from the morgue have been and gone.” He set the paper bag on the desk. “You can handle this. It’s already been checked for prints, and there aren’t any.”
Sergeant Carter peered into the bag, then reached in and drew out an open, thin-bladed clasp knife with a blade about five inches long. The blade was darkly stained.
Laying it on his desk blotter, Carter asked, “Anyone recognize this?”
Lydia managed to overcome her revulsion at the dark stain and leaned forward to examine the knife more closely. In its tancolored bone handle the initials “J.H.” were inset in silver.
“It’s my husband’s,” she said in a whisper. “He always carried it.” Carter looked up at Nicholson. “So he was killed with his own knife, huh? Probably he was passed out on the bed when the killer entered his room.”
“What I figured,” Nicholson said. “Of course we’ll have to get the lab to run a check of the blood type on the knife against Hartman’s, but I’ll bet a beer they match.”
“No bet,” Carter said, “Where’d you turn it up?”
“I was making a routine check of Weygand’s car,” Nicholson said casually. “It was in the glove compartment.”
It was nearly midnight when Lydia got back to her hotel room. She had stood by to protest Jules’ innocence to the two unbelieving homicide officers, then had phoned a lawyer, waited until he arrived, and had outlined the whole situation to him. None of it had done any good. There was no bail in first-degree homicide cases, so Jules Weygand was in jail.
Her performance had helped her own case, she knew, even if it hadn’t helped Jules’. It would have been inconvenient if the police had suspected collusion between her and Jules, even though there had been none. As it was, they had seemed rather admiring that she had stood by her husband in his trouble to the extent that she had sent a friend to watch over him in case Jules attempted suicide.
Of course nobody, including Jules, suspected the real reason for her worry over Jim was that he might commit suicide before she could arrange a suitable accident.
Slipping off her dress and slip, she hung them neatly in the closet. As she peeled off her left stocking, she frowned at the small bloodstain on the inside of her thigh. Then she saw that a run had started where the point of the knife had punctured the nylon when she thrust it down inside the stocking.
Before removing the other stocking, she went into the bathroom and washed away the tiny bloodstain. Reaching down into the other stocking, she drew out a folded slip of paper, opened it and read it for the first time. There hadn’t been time to read it in Jim’s room, of course; only time to get it out of sight.