“But that wasn’t going to happen,” Carolyn said helpfully, “because Luke was dead in the bathroom.”
“Not anymore,” I said. “Oh, he was still dead, but by the time we got into his apartment the cops had hauled him out of here in a body bag. That made the news Sunday night, and after that I never heard another word from Doll. She concluded, reasonably enough I suppose, that any chance she had of making a couple of bucks had just gone down the bathtub drain, so she’d move on to whatever life offered her next.”
“What happened to the cards?” It was Lolly Stoppelgard who wanted to know, reinforcing my view of her as an eminently practical woman.
“Gone,” I said. “Did Luke sell them? If so, what happened to the money? My guess is he put them, briefcase and all, in a coin locker somewhere while he figured out what to do with them. But there must be half a dozen other things that could have happened to them, and I have a feeling we’ll never know where they wound up.”
“And what about Luke?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“The young man,” Edna Gilmartin said. It was, as far as I could recall, the first time she’d spoken up all night. “The young man who died mysteriously in a locked bathroom. Who killed him?”
“Oh, that’s easy,” I said. “Harlan Nugent killed him.”
CHAPTER Twenty-two
I had a tense moment there, I have to admit it. Because all Harlan Nugent had to do was tell us to go home and pick up the phone to call his lawyer.
But what he said was, “That’s ridiculous. I never even knew the man. Why on earth would I kill him?”
“That’s a good question,” I said.
“And we were in London,” Joan Nugent put in. “Neither of us could have had anything to do with it. We were out of the country.”
“You left Wednesday evening,” I said. “Doll dropped the cards at Luke’s apartment on Monday. Sometime between then and when you left, Luke was up here and Harlan Nugent killed him. If I had to guess, I’d go with Tuesday afternoon.” I looked over at Ray. “How does that square with the estimated time of death?”
“No problem, Bernie.”
“I think you must be out of your mind,” Nugent said. “That man was never in this apartment on any of those days.” A shadow passed over his wife’s face, and for an instant it looked as though she was about to say something, but her husband’s hand settled on hers and the moment passed. He set his jaw. “I’ll repeat what I said before. You admitted it was a good question. Why on earth would I kill him?”
“It’s still a good question,” I said, “but I’ve got a couple of good questions myself. Why would a man take off all his clothes and lock himself in somebody else’s bathroom?”
“To take a shower,” Lolly Stoppelgard suggested.
“That would make sense if it was his own bathroom,” Carolyn volunteered, “but it wasn’t. Maybe he got all sweaty posing and he needed to wash up.”
“He was not here,” Harlan Nugent said.
“Or maybe he just needed to use the john, Bern. That wouldn’t get him in the tub, though, would it? Ray, has anybody checked if the shower worked in his apartment on the seventh floor? See, if he couldn’t take a shower at his own place—”
“Forget the shower,” I said. “The water wasn’t on and the body wasn’t wet.”
“Some men tend to lock themselves in the bathroom,” Lolly Stoppelgard said, with a glance at her husband. “Did they find any funny magazines in there with him?”
Time to grab the wheel again. “He would lock himself in the bathroom,” I said, “as a way of hiding. Once, years ago, back in the days when I still engaged in occasional acts of burglary—”
“Aw, Jesus,” Ray muttered.
“—I was an uninvited guest in an empty apartment when its occupant returned. I hid in the closet, though a bathroom would have done as well had one been close at hand. I couldn’t lock the closet, of course.” Someone else had locked the closet, with me in it, and when I managed to get out I found a corpse on the floor. I winced at the memory.
“Nor was I naked,” I continued. “Last week Ray Kirschmann asked me what kind of burglar takes off his clothes in the course of a burglary. No burglar I ever heard of, I told him, so—”
“He was posing,” Patience said. “That’s it, isn’t it?” She smiled at Joan Nugent. “He was posing for you, wasn’t he?”
“I’ve never painted nudes,” Joan Nugent said. “I don’t believe in it.”
“You don’t believe in it?”
“No, I don’t. I think we’ve had entirely too much of that sort of thing down through the centuries. My most recent painting of Luke was in harlequin garb. I assure you he was fully clothed.”
“Then he was changing,” Patience said. “He’d posed in costume, and—”
“Never in costume. When he posed for me he wore street clothes. I would sketch the lines of his body, and then I’d paint the harlequin costume in later. I didn’t need him for that.”
“But he was naked,” I said.
“Oh, no,” she said. “I’d remember that. I’m sure it’s not at all the sort of thing I would forget.”
“Joan,” Harlan Nugent said gently, “shut up.”
“You might have remembered,” I told her, “if you’d known what was going on. But you were unconscious. You’d been drugged.”
“Not a word, Joan,” Nugent said.
“If you’ll all follow me,” I said, leading the way to the studio or guest bedroom, as you prefer. “You were drugged, Mrs. Nugent, and you were unconscious. Your clothes were off. Luke Santangelo’s clothes were off as well, and he was attempting to—”
“Oh my God,” someone said.
“I suppose you were on the daybed over there, or perhaps on the floor. Then there was the sound of your husband’s key in the lock, and seconds later he had thrown open the hall door and announced his presence. He’s a big, hearty man. I’m sure he tends to make his presence known.”
“Sometimes he’ll say, ‘Lucy, I’m home.’ Like Ricky Ricardo, you know. He does a good Cuban accent. Show them, darling.”
Harlan Nugent looked like a man trying to think of a reason to take the next breath.
“You walked in,” I said to him, “and found your wife unconscious, or at the very least out of her mind on drugs. You saw the bathroom door, closed. You tried the knob and it was locked.”
“And then what did I do?”
“You banged on the door, demanding that it be opened. Luke Santangelo was many things, most of them unsavory, but he was not entirely out of his mind. The last thing he was going to do was open the door.”
“Then I’d say we were at an impasse,” Nugent said, “since I’m hardly of a size to slither through the keyhole, and the door doesn’t have one anyway, does it?” He made a huge fist and gave the door a thump. “Pretty sturdy,” he observed, “but I suppose I could have knocked it down in extremis. Kicked it in, put my shoulder to it, that sort of thing. But didn’t I understand that it was still intact, indeed still locked, when the police were forced to break in?”
“I was wondering about that myself,” I said. I went over and tapped on the door, then flicked the switch alongside it. No lights went on or off. I opened the bathroom door and repeated the process, with the same results. “What have we here?” I said. “Doesn’t seem to do anything, does it?”