Mendoza swore to himself, called the Kingmans, and put the question. After fractional hesitation, he thought, Kingman said, really, the exchange he'd had with Twelvetrees that Friday afternoon had been so casual, he couldn't say what mood the boy had been in. Mendoza was slightly encouraged to detect this as a lie; but what did that mean, why should Kingman lie about it?
About then, Dwyer, who'd been out seeing various people, came in and said that if it meant anything, it looked like those Kingmans had been on the hunt for Twelvetrees as early as that Saturday morning. Four people so far, Miss Webster among them, had said that Mr. Kingman had phoned them that morning asking if they'd seen Twelvetrees or knew where he was. Giving as excuse some unspecified business suddenly arisen.
" Oye, para que? ” said Mendoza vexedly. "What's the use-this I don't see head or tail of! I'm getting old, Bert. Old and decrepit."
Dwyer said sympathetically that sometimes a thing got stuck, that was all, until all of a sudden you got hold of something that explained the whole thing. Mendoza said morosely that when and if it came along probably somebody would have to point it out to him, the elementary mistakes he'd been making-premature senility, without a doubt. He told Dwyer about Morris coming in to see the gun, left a note on the sergeant's desk of a few places where he might be between now and midnight, added an injunction to call him immediatamente if anything came in from Pennsylvania, took up his hat, and left the office.
He walked into Alison's apartment at seven o'clock and found her contemplating a small canvas propped on an easel in front of the window. She operated a moderately successful charm school through the week, in her spare time was a painter-and a ruthlessly self-critical one. She said now despondently, "I've missed it-it's no good at all, is it? Looks like a postcard."
Mendoza looked briefly at a pleasant, if undistinguished, painted view over the immediate rooftops, and said it looked all right to him.
"All right!" said Alison crossly. "I don't know what you mean by that! It's hopeless, that's all."
" Claro que si, it's hopeless. Ambos tu y yo mismo, you and me both. Stop worrying over that, come and soothe me. I need soothing like the very devil. I need to have my hand held by a sympathetic female and be told what a big strong smart masterful fellow I really am. I might even find it helpful to lie down quiet with my head in your lap, of all ridiculous conventional poses, and listen to the same theme at infinite length."
" Pobrecito, que paso? " asked Alison, sufficiently alarmed by this unprecedented behavior to forget her art. "Come and sit down, tell Mother who's been mean to you."
He pulled her down beside him on the couch. "That's the damned awful thing, mi vida, it's nobody else but me-I've been a stupid, thickheaded, imbecilic dunce. I don't know any more of importance about this thing than I did before we found the corpse-and because I am-tell me, tell me!-because I am a brilliant and gifted detective, quite unused to failure, I'm out of sorts with myself."
"You are," said Alison obediently, "a brilliant and gifted detective, un macho muy valoroso, un hombre intelligente, y agraciado, y amiable, y de aspecto bravo y bello, y attractivo, y importante, y-y cancuntador, y concienzudo, y-y elegante, y honorable, y un jefe muy justamente, y-y-y magminimo, y absolutamente un caballero muy satisgfactorio y maravilloso. Do you feel any better now?"
"A little, a little. This I like to hear. So I am, I know-"
" Y un egotiste! " said Alison.
"That I know too." The kitten Sheba, who resembled her mother in being brown, sleek, and affectionate, leaped up beside him, walked onto his stomach, and settled down to purr as he stroked her. "Ah, I do begin to feel better-I am being duly appreciated… Even I think my mind begins to work with its usual acuteness… Damn it, I can still be right! Friday night-Friday night. That ritual or whatever it is, it was over at nine. All right. Say they got away by a quarter or twenty past, they could be out at 267th by ten o'clock. I'd give myself an hour at least, that drive, but they could have done it."
"Undoubtedly," said Alison.
"You know nothing about it, silencio."
"I'm only soothing you. Whatever you say is so must be so, naturalmente.”
" Muy bien, soothe me in silence.” He slid down comfortably, cradling the kitten, stretched out and put his head in her lap. "They could have. Now, Bainbridge says two to six hours before death for that beef stew and so on. Seven to eleven. That's all right, that can fit. Say he's raised his demands, and-of course, claro esta! -because whatever plan he was counting on that Wednesday had fallen through. Yes. They want to see him. They chase right out there after their damned service, and get there about ten, say even ten-thirty. And-and there's an argument. But, a fight? This namby-pamby blackmailer and a smooth con man? Why? Can we say maybe Twelvetrees insulted Mrs. Kingman, and Kingman was protecting her honor?"
" Oye, la drama magnifico! " said Alison. "Next week East Lynne."
" Chiton, I'm thinking! Well, anyway, there's a struggle, Kingman snatches up the gun lying there on the bureau-Twelvetrees' gun-and hits him a little too hard. O.K. Then, just as I built it up befor-the dither, the inspiration of the trap, etcetera. Only Bartlett had nothing to do with it, it all happened at least an hour after he'd been killed-that was the kids after all. And because Kingman doesn't drive, the woman went off to do that part of it while he buried the body and so on. It'd have taken that long easily, the time it took her to drive in with the Porsche-after they'd made the plan, too-that took some time-to put her on the spot to be the lady in the serape."
The kitten got up, stretched, yawned to show him a pink mouth and needle-sharp white teeth, turned around and settled down again.
" Perfecto! " said Alison. " Obvio, that's how it was."
"You are no help whatever," said Mendoza. "And this is a most uncomfortable position, regardless of all the movies and the award-winning photographs of couples in parks. If it wasn't for disturbing the cat, I'd move… Obviously it is not how it was-not exactly, anyway. I can see them finding the trap by accident, or just possibly Twelvetrees had called their attention to it on some former visit. As confidence workers, they're used to making slick plans on the spur of the moment. But how the hell did they know where to lind that trowel? They-" He stopped abruptly.
"These are the people from that Temple? Well, she's psychic, isn't she? She divined it."
" Aguarda, un momento! Si, como no? Yo caigo en ello! -yes, of course, of course!" He swung his legs off the couch and stood up abruptly, holding the kitten. "Why didn't I see that before? I tell you, I'm going senile!"
"But you get it now, or so you just said. Better late than never. You've solved the whole case-and under my helpful feminine soothing."