“In case you think you fooled somebody this afternoon, you’re wrong. Arthur Tingley told me he didn’t trust you. Neither do I.”
“Then we’re even.” Fox matched her bluntness. “My trust in you is nothing to brag about. And apparently Tingley’s trust in you was something less than absolute, since he arranged secretly with Carrie and Edna to check on you.”
Miss Yates made a noise. The muscles of her face tightened, but the expression that appeared in her eyes could not have been called fear. Finally she began, “So Carrie—” and stopped.
Fox merely nodded.
“Very well.” She wet her lips. “What about it?”
“Several things about it, Miss Yates. For one thing, your extraordinary conduct. Is it true that you spoke with Tingley on the telephone at eight o’clock Tuesday evening?”
“Yes.”
“Are you positive it was his voice?”
“Certainly I am. And what he said — it couldn’t have been anyone else.”
“Then why — I don’t ask why you didn’t tell me, since you weren’t obliged to tell me anything if you didn’t feel like it — but did you tell the police?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
She just looked at him.
“Why not?” Fox insisted. “You’re intelligent enough to know that in their investigation of the murder that information was essential, vital. Did you want to obstruct the inquiry into the murder?”
Miss Yates’s eyes were leveled at his. “You just said,” she declared evenly, “that I wasn’t obliged to tell you anything if I didn’t feel like it. I’m not obliged to tell you anything now, either. But if I refuse to, I’m not fool enough to suppose that that will be the end of it, now that Carrie—” Her lips tightened, and in a moment she went on, “You asked if I wanted to obstruct the inquiry into the murder. I didn’t care about that one way or another.”
“You don’t care whether the person who killed Tingley — knocked him on the head and cut his throat — is discovered or not?”
“Well — I care, yes. I don’t suppose any normal person wants a murderer to go free. But I knew if I told about that phone call I’d have to tell what it was about, and I’m entitled to my pride, everybody is. There has only been one pride in my life — I’ve only had one thing to be proud about — my work. The work and the business I’ve given my life to — and for the last twenty years I’ve been responsible for its success. My friends and the people who know me, they know that — and what’s more important, I know it. And when Carrie — when I learned that Tingley had actually suspected me, had actually had my subordinates spying on me—”
A flash gleamed in her eyes and vanished again. “I could have killed him myself. I could. I would have gone there if Cynthia Harley hadn’t come—”
“But you didn’t.”
“No,” she said bitterly, “I didn’t.”
“And you didn’t tell about the phone call because you didn’t want it known that Tingley had you watched by your subordinates.”
“Yes. And then later, there was another reason, when it came out about Amy’s getting hit on the head and lying there unconscious for an hour. I didn’t understand it, and I don’t now, but I don’t believe she killed her uncle or was involved in it, and I saw that if it became known that he was alive at eight o’clock it would make it a lot harder for her. So that was another reason. But not the main reason.”
“But there was also,” Fox suggested, “a pretty cogent reason why you should have told about the phone call. Wasn’t there?”
“I don’t know what.”
“Your own position. As a murder suspect. You’re aware, of course, that with the police you’re still under suspicion. You have no alibi during the period that they now regard as the important one. It isn’t very pleasant to be suspected of murder, and by telling about the phone call—”
Miss Yates snorted. “Let them suspect. Anyway, if they seriously suspect me of murder, what good would it do to tell them about the phone call? No one but me heard Arthur Tingley’s voice, and couldn’t they say I was lying?”
“I suppose they could.” Fox eyed her gloomily. “I wish to inform you that at present it is not my intention to tell the police about this, and I don’t think Carrie Murphy is going to, at least not right away. How about you?”
“Why should I tell them now if I haven’t already? If they find out about it and come and ask me — and I don’t trust Carrie or you either—”
“I don’t blame you.” Fox arose. “I don’t trust myself after today. My heart’s in the right place, but my brain’s withering. Thank you very much. Don’t get up.”
But Miss Yates, adhering to the common courtesies even for a man she didn’t trust, went to the foyer with him and let him out.
He got in his car and drove to Seventh Avenue and turned downtown. Near 18th Street he stopped in front of a restaurant, went in, and told the waitress to bring him something good to eat provided it wasn’t codfish or cauliflower. He was not by any means indifferent to food, and even in his present deplorable condition would have become aware of it if he had been served with something inedible, but when he left half an hour later he could not possibly have told whether the contented feeling in his stomach should be credited to breast of guinea hen or baked beans.
The dashboard clock, which he kept set within a minute or two, said five minutes to eight as he rolled to the curb in front of 320 Grove Street, got out and crossed the sidewalk to the vestibule. A figure emerged from a shadowy corner and was revealed as Mr. Olson with a toothpick in his mouth. He announced that Miss Duncan’s bell was still being ignored upstairs, let Fox in, and stood listening in the hall until voices from above assured him that this caller was still a friend.
Fox, however, saw plainly from the expression on Amy’s face that though he might be regarded as a friend he certainly wasn’t the right one. When the door opened he was confronted by a vision of youthful loveliness in a becoming green frock, eyes shining and cheeks a little flushed with warm though restrained expectancy; and the passage of the cloud of disappointment across her features was not swift enough to escape his glance.
“Only me,” he said. “Sorry.”
She tried to compensate. “Oh, I’m glad! How nice — I mean I was hoping you — here, let me have your coat—”
He let her put it on a hanger. A rapid swoop of his eyes showed that the room had recently received attention; the cushions on the sofa had been patted into shape and neatly arranged; the magazines and other objects on the table had been tidily disposed; the rugs showed no careless speck and the ashtrays were chaste.
“You going out?” he asked politely.
“Oh, no. Sit down. No, I’m not going out. I... will you have a cigarette?”
“Thanks. I suppose I should have phoned—”
He stopped, and she whirled, as a bell rang. “Excuse me,” she said, and stepped to the door to the hall and opened it. Fox surmised, of course, who it was, and was inclined to look the other way not to constrain any display of sentiment that might be contemplated, but the sound of Amy’s modestly effusive greeting tapering off on a note of bewildered surprise demanded his attention and got it. Whereupon his own brows were raised in surprise, for Leonard Cliff entered the room like a thundercloud, somber, grim and menacing.