“She was twenty-eight years old. I’m thirty-one. She was only twenty-five when she... stopped work. She was six and I was nine when our mother died, and she was twelve and I was fifteen when our father died. That’s why it’s so important.”
I nodded. “Certainly.”
“You’re not a newspaper reporter. William told me your name, but I don’t remember.”
“William’s the elevator man,” Fleming said.
To him: “Thank you.” To her: “My name is Archie Goodwin. I’m a private detective, I work for Nero Wolfe, and I came—”
“You’re a detective.”
“Yes.”
“Then you know about things. You said I wouldn’t want the man that killed my sister to go free, and no, I wouldn’t, but if he’s arrested and there’s a trial, no one is going to say about my sister what you said about her. If anyone said that at the trial it would be in the newspapers. If anyone is going to say that there mustn’t be any trial. Even if he goes free. So you didn’t know what I want.”
That made the second woman in one day who didn’t want a trial, though for a different reason. “I do now,” I told her, “and from your standpoint there’s no argument. I even agree with you, at least part way. You don’t want a trial even if they get the right man. What I don’t want is a trial of the wrong man, and that’s what is going to happen unless someone stops it. Of course you read the papers.”
“I read all of them.”
“Naturally. Then you know they are holding a man named Orrie Cather and that he has worked for Nero Wolfe. Had you ever heard or seen that name before? Orrie Cather?”
“No.”
“Are you sure? Didn’t your sister ever mention him?”
“No. I’m sure she didn’t.”
“Mr. Wolfe and I know him very well. We do not believe he killed your sister. I don’t say we know all about him. He may have had, he may have, some — uh — connections that we don’t know about. I will even concede that he may have been the one who was paying the rent for your sister’s apartment, and her other — You’re shaking your head.”
“She didn’t shake her head,” Fleming said.
“Sorry, I thought you did. Anyway, whether he was paying the rent or not, we do not believe he killed her, and that’s why Mr. Wolfe sent me to see you. If they bring him to trial — you know what will happen. Everything they have found out about your sister will be on record. As you know, a jury is supposed to acquit a man if there’s a reasonable doubt. We want to establish a reasonable doubt for the police so it won’t get in a courtroom for a jury, and we thought you might help. You saw your sister fairly often, didn’t you?”
“That’s pretty clever,” Fleming said. “But I must remind you that for my wife a trial of the right man might be just as bad as a trial of the wrong man. I don’t agree with her, not at all, but Isabel was her sister.”
“No,” I said, “I’m not being clever. All we need is a reasonable doubt. For instance, what if we can show the police that there’s another man, or woman, who had a good motive? Or what if they learn that Isabel told someone — it could be your wife — that someone had threatened to kill her? If and if and if. For our purpose, Mr. Wolfe’s and mine, it doesn’t have to be strong enough to charge him and try him, just the doubt. But even if they nailed him, his trial might not be as bad, for your wife, as Orrie Gather’s trial is sure to be. We know something about the line they think they have on Orrie.”
“What is it?”
“I can’t tell you that. We got it in confidence.”
He was squinting at me. “You know, Mr. Goodwin, I’m a mathematics teacher and I like problems. Since this is so close to us, though it’s closer to my wife than to me, it isn’t just a problem, but still my mind has the habit.” He put a hand on his wife’s knee. “You won’t mind, dear, if I admit I would like to help with this problem. But I won’t. I know how you feel. You do exactly what you want to do.”
“Fair enough,” I told him. And to her: “You saw your sister often, didn’t you?”
She had put her hand on top of his. “Yes,” she said.
“Once or twice a week?”
“Yes. Nearly always we had dinner together on Saturday and went to a show or a movie. My husband plays chess Saturday evenings.”
“According to the newspaper, when you went there day before yesterday you got no answer to your ring and the superintendent let you in. Is that correct?”
“Yes.”
“That was an important moment, when you entered the bedroom. I don’t want to jar you again, Mrs. Fleming, I truly don’t, but it’s important. What was your first thought when you saw your sister’s dead body there on the floor?”
“I didn’t — it wasn’t a thought.”
“First there was the shock, of course. But when you saw the — when you realized she had been murdered, it would have been natural to have the thought He killed her or She killed her, something like that. That’s why it’s important; a first thought like that is often right. Who was the he or the she?”
“There wasn’t any he or she. I didn’t have any such thought.”
“Are you sure? At a time like that your mind jerks around.”
“I know it does, but I didn’t have a thought such as that then or any other time, that he killed her or she killed her. I couldn’t even try to guess who killed her. All I know is there mustn’t be a trial.”
“There will be a trial, of Orrie Cather, unless we can find a way to stop it. Did your sister ever show you her diary?”
She frowned. “She didn’t keep a diary.”
“Yes, she did. The police have it. But since—”
“What does it say?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t seen it. Since—”
“She shouldn’t have done that. That makes it worse. She didn’t tell me. She must have kept it in that drawer she kept locked. Don’t I have a right to it? Can’t I make them give it to me?”
“Not now. You can later. If there’s a trial it will be evidence. It’s called an exhibit. Since you never saw it, we’ll have to skip it. It looks pretty hopeless, because I don’t know of anyone but you who can give me any information. Of course a good prospect would be the man who paid the rent for the apartment, and the car and the perfume and so on, but I don’t know who he is. Do you?”
“No.”
“That surprises me. I thought you would. You were close with your sister, weren’t you?”
“Certainly I was.”
“Then you must know who else was. Since you say you couldn’t even try to guess who killed her, I’m not asking that, just who knew her well. Of course you have told the police.”
“No, I haven’t.”
I raised a brow. “Are you refusing to talk to them too?”
“No, but I couldn’t tell them much because I don’t know. It was...” She stopped, shook her head, and turned to her husband. “You tell him, Barry.”
He squeezed her hand. “You could almost say,” he said, “that Isabel lived two lives. One of them was with my wife, her sister, and to a much less extent me. The other one was with her — well, call it her circle. My wife and I know very little about it, but we sort of understood that her friends were mostly from the world of the theater. You will realize that in the circumstances my wife preferred not to associate with them.”
“It wasn’t what I preferred,” she corrected. “It was what was.”
That helped a lot, another whole circle, but I might have expected it. “All right,” I told her, “you can’t give me names you don’t know. Isn’t there anyone, anyone at all, that you know and she knew?”