And Tuesday at noon, when I had just started on my fourth griddle cake and my second cup of coffee, the phone rang to tell me that I would be welcome at the DA’s office in twenty minutes. I made it in forty, and was there five solid hours, one of them with the DA himself present, and at the end they knew everything that Rowcliff did. There was one little spot where the chances looked good for my getting booked as a material witness, but I bumped through it without having to yell for help.
My intention was, if and when I left Leonard Street a free man, to stop in at Homicide West to see if Cramer had decided to let me look at the reports, but I was interrupted. After finally being dismissed by Mandelbaum, as I was on my way down the hall from his room to the front, a door on the right opened and one of the three best dancers I had ever stepped with came out. Seeing me, she stopped.
“Oh,” she said. “Hello.”
An assistant DA named Riley, having opened the door for her, was there shutting it. He saw me, thought he would say something, decided not to, and closed the door. The look Lois was giving was not an invitation to dance, far from it.
“So,” she said, “you’ve made it nice for us, you and your fat boss.”
“Then don’t speak to me,” I told her. “Give me an icy stare and flounce out. As for making it nice for you, wrong address. We held on till the last possible tenth of a second.”
“Hooray for you. Our hero.” We were moving down the hall. “Where are you bound for?”
“Home, with a stopover.”
We were in the anteroom, with people there on chairs. She waited until we were in the outer hall to say, “I think I want to ask you something. If we go where we can get a drink, by the time we get there I’ll know.”
I looked at my wrist. Ten minutes to six. We no longer had a client to be billed for expenses, but there was a chance she would contribute something useful for the timetables, and besides, looking at her was a pleasant change after the five hours I had just spent. So I said I’d be glad to buy her a drink whether she decided to ask me something or not.
I took her to Mohan’s, which was in walking distance around the corner, found an empty booth at the far end, and ordered. When the drinks came she took a sip of her Bloody Mary, made a face, took a bigger sip, and put the glass down.
“I’ve decided to ask you,” she said. “I ought to wait until I’ve had a couple because my nerves have gone back on me. When I saw you there in the hall my knees were shaking.”
“After you saw me or before?”
“They were already shaking. I knew I’d have to tell about it, I knew that yesterday, but I was afraid nobody would believe me. That’s what I want to ask you, I want you to back me up and then they’ll have to believe me. You see, I know that nobody used my father’s gun to kill Jim Eber and Corey Brigham. I want you to say you were with me when I threw it in the river.”
I raised my brows. “That’s quite a want. God knows what you might have wanted if you waited till you had a couple. You threw your father’s gun in the river?”
“Yes.” She was making her eyes meet mine. “Yes, I did.”
“When?”
“Thursday morning. That’s how I know nobody could have used it, because Jim was killed Thursday afternoon. I got it the day before, Wednesday, you know how I got it, going in with that rug held up in front of me. I hid it—”
“How did you open the library door?”
“I had a key. Jim Eber let me have a duplicate made from his — about a year ago. Jim was rather warm on me for a while. I hid the gun in my room, under the mattress. Then I was afraid Dad might have the whole place searched and it would be found, so I got rid of it. Don’t you want to know why I took it?”
“Sure, that would help.”
“I took it because I was afraid something might happen. I knew how Dad felt about Susan, and I knew it was getting worse every day between him and Wyman, and I knew he had a gun in his drawer, and I hate guns anyway. I didn’t think any one thing — I didn’t think he would shoot Susan or Wyman would shoot him — I just thought something might happen. So Thursday morning I put it in my bag and went and got my car, and drove up the West Side Highway and onto George Washington Bridge, and stopped on the bridge and threw the gun in the river.”
She finished the drink and put the glass down. “Naturally I never intended to tell anybody. Friday morning, when the news came that Jim Eber had been shot, it never occurred to me that that had anything to do with Dad’s gun. How could it, when I knew Dad’s gun was in the river? Then that afternoon at Nero Wolfe’s office I saw how wrong I was. What he suggested, that whoever took the gun should put it out in sight somewhere, naturally I would have done that if I could — but I was afraid that if I told what I had done no one would believe me. It would sound like I was just trying to explain it away. Could I have a refill?”
I caught the waiter’s eye and gave him the sign.
She carried on. “Then Sunday, the news about Corey Brigham — of course that made it worse. And then yesterday, with Nero Wolfe again — you know how that was. And all day today, detectives and district attorneys with all of us — they were there all morning, and we have been at the district attorney’s office all afternoon, in separate rooms. Now I have to tell about it, I know that, but I don’t think they’ll believe me. I’m sure they won’t. But they will if you say you went with me and saw me throw it in the river.”
The waiter was coming with the refills, and I waited until he had gone.
“You left out something,” I told her. “You left out about hiring a crew of divers to search the river bottom and offering a trip to Hollywood and ten thousand dollars in cash to the one who found the gun.”
She surveyed me. “Are you being droll?”
“Not very. But that would give it color and would stand up just as well. Since you’ve been answering questions all day, I suppose you have accounted for your movements Thursday morning. What did you tell them?”
She nodded. “I’ll have to admit I lied, I know that. I told them that after breakfast I was on the terrace until about half past eleven, and then I went shopping, and then I went to lunch on the Bolivar. Now I’ll have to admit I didn’t go shopping.”
“Where did you tell them you went?”
“To three shoe shops.”
“Did you name the shops?”
“Yes. They asked. Zussman’s, and Yorio’s, and Weeden’s.”
“Did you buy any shoes?”
“Yes, I—” She chopped it off. “Of course not, if I wasn’t there. How could I?”
I shook my head at her. “Drink up. What was the name of the girl who hung onto the clapper so the bell couldn’t ring, or was it a boy?”
“Damn it, don’t be droll!”
“I’m not. You are. Beyond remarking that they’ll check at those three shops, and that if you tried that mess on them they’d find that you didn’t get your car from the garage that morning, there’s no point in listing the dozen or so other holes. I should be sore at you for thinking I could be sap enough to play with you, but you meant well, and it’s a tough trick to be both noble and nimble. So drink up and forget it — unless you want to tell me who did take the gun. Do you know?”
“Of course I don’t!”
“Just protecting the whole bunch, including Nora?”
“I’m not protecting anybody! I just want this awful business to stop!” She touched my hand with fingertips. “Archie. So I made a mess of it, but it wouldn’t be a mess if you would help me work it out. We could have done it Wednesday night. We didn’t take my car, we took a taxi — or we walked to the East River and threw it in. Won’t you help me?”
And there you are. What if I had lost sight of basic facts? The circumstances had been favorable. When I first saw her Monday afternoon on the terrace, as she approached with the sun full on her, I had realized that no alterations were needed anywhere, from the top of her head clear down to her toes. Talking with her, I had realized that she was fine company. At Colonna’s Tuesday evening I had realized that she was good to be close to. Not to mention that by the time I was too old to provide properly for the family her father would have died and left her a mint. What if I had lost my head, made a supreme effort, rushed her off her feet, and wrapped her up? I would now be stuck with a female who got so rattled in a pinch that she thought she could sidetrack a murder investigation with a plant so half-baked it was pathetic. There you are.