“If death ever slept,” Lois blurted.
Their heads all turned to her. Not, probably, that they expected her to supply anything helpful; they were glad to have an excuse to take their eyes off Wolfe and relieve the strain. They hadn’t been exchanging glances. Apparently no one felt like meeting other eyes.
“That’s all,” Lois said. “What are you all looking at me for? That just came out.”
The heads went back to Wolfe. Trella asked, “Am I dumb? Or did you say you want us to prove you’re wrong?”
“That’s one way of putting it, Mrs. Jarrell. Yes.”
“How do we prove it?”
Wolfe nodded. “That’s the difficulty. I don’t expect you to prove a negative. The simplest way would be to produce the gun, but I’ve abandoned hope of that. I don’t intend to go through the dreary routine of inquiry on opportunity; that would take all night, and checking your answers would take an army a week, and I have no army. But I have gathered from the public reports that Eber died between two o’clock and six o’clock Thursday afternoon, and Brigham died between ten o’clock Sunday morning and three o’clock that afternoon, so it may be possible to exclude one or more of you. Has anyone an alibi for either of those periods?”
“You’ve stretched the periods,” Roger Foote declared. “It’s three to five Thursday and eleven to two Sunday.”
“I gave the extremes, Mr. Foote. The extremes are the safest. You seem well informed.”
“My God, I ought to be. The cops.”
“No doubt. You’ll soon see much more of them if we don’t discredit my conclusion.”
“You can start by excluding me,” Otis Jarrell said. “Thursday afternoon I had business appointments, three of them, and got home a little before six. Sunday—”
“Were the appointments all at the same place?”
“No. One downtown and two midtown. Sunday morning I was with the police commissioner at the Penguin Club for an hour, from ten-thirty to eleven-thirty, went straight home, was in my library until lunch time at one-thirty, returned to the library and was there until five o’clock. So you can exclude me.”
“Pfui.” Wolfe was disgusted. “You can’t be as fatuous as you sound, Mr. Jarrell. Your Thursday is hopeless, and your Sunday isn’t much better. Not only were you loose between the Penguin Club and your home, but what about the library? Were you alone there?”
“Most of the time, yes. But if I had gone out I would have been seen.”
“Nonsense. Is there a rear entrance to your premises?”
“There’s a service entrance.”
“Then it isn’t even worth discussing. A man with your talents and your money, resolved on murder, could certainly devise a way of getting down to the ground without exposure.” Wolfe’s head moved. “When I invited exclusion by alibis I didn’t mean to court inanities. Can any of you furnish invulnerable proof that you must be eliminated for either of those periods?”
“On Sunday,” Roger Foote said, “I went to Belmont to look at horses. I got there at nine o’clock and I didn’t leave until after five.”
“With company? Continuously?”
“No. I was always in sight of somebody, but a lot of different people.”
“Then you’re not better off than Mr. Jarrell. Does anyone else want to try, now that you know the requirements?”
Apparently nobody did. Wyman and Susan, who were holding hands, looked at each other but said nothing. Trella turned around to look at her brother and muttered something I didn’t catch. Lois just sat, and so did Jarrell.
Then Nora Kent spoke. “I want to say something, Mr. Wolfe.”
“Go ahead, Miss Kent. You can’t make it any worse.”
“I’d like to make it better — for me. If you’re making an exception of me you haven’t said so, and I think you should. I think you should tell them that I came to see you Friday afternoon and what I said.”
“You tell them. I’ll listen.”
But she kept focused on him. “I came right after lunch on Friday. I told you that I had recognized the new secretary as Archie Goodwin as soon as I saw him, and I asked why you had sent him, and whether Mr. Jarrell had hired you or someone else had. I told you that the murder of Jim Eber had made me think I had better try to find out what the situation was. I told you I had discovered that Mr. Jarrell’s gun was missing from the drawer of his desk, and that I had just found out that the caliber of the bullet that killed Jim Eber was the same as Mr. Jarrell’s gun. I told you that I wasn’t frightened, but I didn’t want to just wait and see what happened, and I wanted to hire you to protect my interests and pay you a retainer. Is that correct?”
“It is indeed, madam. And well reported. And?”
“And I wanted Mr. Jarrell to know. I wanted them all to know. And I wanted to be sure that you hadn’t forgotten.”
“You may be. And?”
“And I wanted it on the record. I don’t think they’re going to discredit your conclusion. I think you’re going to tell the police about the gun, and I know what will happen then. I would appreciate it if you’ll tell them that I came to see you Friday and what I said. I’ll tell them myself, of course, but I wish you would. I’m not frightened, but—”
Jarrell had been controlling himself. Now he exploded. “Damn you, Nora! You saw Wolfe Friday, three days ago? And didn’t tell me?”
She sent the gray eyes at him. “Don’t yell at me, Mr. Jarrell. I won’t have you yelling at me, not even now. Will you tell the police, Mr. Wolfe?”
“I will if I see them, Miss Kent, and I agree with you, reluctantly, that I’m probably going to.” He took in the audience. “There is a third period, a brief one, which I haven’t mentioned, because we covered it on Friday — from six to six-thirty Wednesday afternoon, when the gun was taken. None of you was excluded from that, either, not even Mr. Brigham, but he is now.” He went to Jarrell. “I bring that up, sir, because you stated explicitly that your daughter-in-law took the gun, but you admitted that you had no proof. Have you any now?”
“No. Proof that you would accept, no.”
“Have you proof that anyone would accept?”
“Certainly he hasn’t.” It was Wyman. He was looking, not at Wolfe, but at his father. But he said “he,” not “you,” though he was looking at him. “And now it’s a little too much. Now it may not be just taking a gun, it may be killing two men with it. Of course he has no proof. He hates her, that’s all. He wants to smear her. He made passes at her, he kept it up for a year, and she wouldn’t let him touch her, and so he hates her. That’s all there is to it.”
Wolfe made a face. “Mrs. Jarrell. You heard what your husband said?”
Susan nodded, just perceptibly. “Yes, I heard.”
“Is it true?”
“Yes. I don’t want—” She closed her mouth and opened it again. “Yes, it’s true.”
Wolfe’s head jerked left. “Mr. Jarrell. Did you make improper advances to your son’s wife?”
“No!”
Wyman looked straight at his father and said distinctly, “You’re a liar.”
“Oh, my God,” Trella said. “This is fine. This is wonderful.”
If I know any man who doesn’t need feeling sorry for it’s Nero Wolfe, but I came close to it then. After all the trouble he had taken to get them there to help him out of his predicament, they had turned his office into a laundromat for washing dirty linen.
He turned and snapped at me, “Archie, draw a check to Mr. Jarrell for ten thousand dollars.” As I got up and went to the safe for the checkbook he snapped at them, “Then it’s hopeless. I was afraid it would be, but it was worth trying. I admit I made the effort chiefly for the sake of my own self-esteem, but also I felt that you deserved this last chance, at least some of you. Now you’re all in for it, and one of you is doomed. Mr. Jarrell, you don’t want me anymore, and heaven knows I don’t want you. Some of Mr. Goodwin’s things are up there in the room he occupied, and he’ll send or go for them. The check, Archie?”