“Thank you, Miss Yates, but I didn’t ask for—”
“Very well. The police did,” she said grimly, “and I thought you might like to know what they do. Usually I have dinner at Bellino’s on 23rd Street, but it was raining and I was tired and dispirited, and I went home and ate sardines and cheese. At eight o’clock a friend of mine, Miss Cynthia Harley, came to play cribbage, which we do Tuesdays and Fridays, and stayed until half past ten. What else do you want me to tell you?”
“Cribbage?”
Her brows lifted. “Is anything wrong with cribbage?”
“Not at all.” Fox smiled at her. “Only I am impressed at the pervasiveness of the Tingley spirit. Tell me, Miss Yates, who in this place dislikes Miss Duncan?”
“No one does that I know of, except Arthur Tingley. He did.”
“The quarrel, I believe, when she left here, was about an employee who got into trouble and Tingley fired her.”
Miss Yates nodded. “That was the final quarrel. They never did get along. For one thing, Amy was always standing up for Phil.”
“His son Phil?”
“His adopted son. Phil’s not a Tingley.”
“Oh, I didn’t know that. Adopted recently?”
“No. Twenty-four years ago, when he was four years old.” Miss Yates stirred impatiently. “Are you expecting to help Amy by questions like this?”
“I don’t know. I would like as much of the background as you’ll take time to give me. Wasn’t Tingley married?”
“Yes. But his wife died in childbirth and a year later he adopted Phil.”
“Do you know who Phil’s parents were?”
“No, but I know he came from some home up in the country somewhere.”
“You said Miss Duncan was always standing up for him. Did he need standing up for?”
Miss Yates snorted. “He not only did, he does, and he always will. He’s not a Tingley. He’s an anarchist.”
“Really? I thought anarchists were extinct. You don’t mean he throws bombs, do you?”
“I mean,” said Miss Yates in a tone that excluded levity, “that he condemns the social and economic structure. He disapproves of the kind of money we have. Because he was an adopted son, Arthur kept him on the payroll and let him have a drawing account of forty dollars a week which he never half earned. He was in Mr. Fry’s department, with a territory in Brooklyn, mostly neighborhood stores and delicatessen shops. Why I said Amy was always standing up for him, Arthur kept jumping on him once or twice a week, and Amy kept saying there was no sense in it because Phil was what he was and yelling at him wouldn’t help any. I suppose she was right, but Arthur was what he was too.”
“I see,” Fox screwed up his lips and looked thoughtful. “Do you know whether Tingley’s disapproval of his adopted son led to any step as drastic as disinheritance? Do you know anything about his will?”
“I know all about it.”
“You do? Will you tell me?”
“Certainly.” Miss Yates was plainly desirous of erecting no needless obstructions to an early conclusion of this interview which was keeping her from the mixing vats. “The police know it, so why shouldn’t you? I don’t mind saying that some of us here were worried about what might happen in case of Arthur’s death. Especially Mr. Fry and me. We knew Arthur had had the idea handed down to him of keeping the business exclusively Tingley, and that was why he adopted a son when his wife died and he vowed not to marry again. And we knew if it went to Phil, with the notions he had, there was no telling what would happen. But this morning, Mr. Austin, the attorney, told us about the will. It leaves everything to Phil, but takes control out of his hands by setting up a trust. Mr. Austin and Mr. Fry and I are the trustees. If Phil is married and has a child, it goes to the child at the age of twenty-one.”
Fox grunted. “That’s reaching into the future, all right. Did Phil know about the will?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did you or Mr. Fry?”
“I said we didn’t. Not till this morning.”
“So you and Mr. Fry, with Austin as a minority of one, are now in complete control of the business.”
“Yes.”
“All phases of it, including such details as salaries and emoluments—”
“That,” said Miss Yates curtly, cutting him off, “I don’t have to listen to, however willing I may be to help you get Amy out of trouble. I had to take it from the police, but not from you. Mr. Fry and I each get nine thousand dollars a year, and we’re satisfied with it. He has put two sons and a daughter through college and I have over a hundred thousand dollars in government bonds and real estate. Neither of us cut Arthur Tingley’s throat to get a raise in salary.”
“I believe you,” said Fox, smiling at her. “But I was thinking of the adopted son. Since control is entirely out of his hands, and if the trustees were so minded they could leave him with no income at all by a judicious manipulation of operating expenses, which include salaries, it seems unlikely that he murdered Tingley with an eye to personal profit. Unless he expected to inherit outright. Do you suppose he expected that?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know whether he knew the terms of the will or not.”
“No.”
“Would he be capable of murder?”
“I think he might be capable of anything. But as I told you, I think Arthur Tingley’s death was in some way connected with the trouble we’ve been having with our product.”
“You mean the quinine.”
“Yes.”
“Why do you think that?”
“Because I do. Because that’s the only calamity we’ve ever had here and he was killed right in the middle of it, right here, right in his office.”
Fox nodded. “You may be right,” he admitted. “You realize, of course, that the police assume that the murderer was familiar with these premises. Not only did the knife come from the rack out there, but the weight — did the police tell you he was struck on the head by a two-pound weight which came from this room — from that scale there?”
“They tried to. But he wasn’t.”
“Huh?” Fox’s head jerked and he stared. “He wasn’t?”
“No. The weights that belong to that scale are all there. The one he was hit with belonged to a scale that old Thomas Tingley used when he started the business. Arthur kept it on his desk as a paperweight.”
“I didn’t see it there yesterday, and I usually see things.”
“It must have been there,” Miss Yates declared. “It may have been under papers instead of on them. It usually was. Why, is that important?”
“I would call it vital,” said Fox dryly. “I don’t know about the police, but I have been regarding it as settled that the murderer was someone extremely familiar with this place, because he got that weight from this room before making the attack. But if the weight was right there on Tingley’s desk — that spreads it out in all directions. As for the knife — anyone — even someone who had never been in the factory — might have expected to find a sharp knife in a titbits factory. And there was plenty of time to look, with Tingley on the floor unconscious, and it was in plain sight there on the rack. Was it?”
“Was it what?”
“In plain sight. Are the knives left on the racks at night?”
“Yes.”
“Well. This certainly opens it up.” Fox was frowning. “You say you left last evening at a quarter past six?”
“Yes.”
“Tingley was in his office alone?”
“Yes.”
“Did he say anything to you about expecting any caller or callers?”
“No.”
“He didn’t mention that he had phoned to ask Miss Duncan to come to see him?”