“Not at all, not at all. Come along, we’ll sit in the living room.” As she led the way down a long dark carpeted hall with a chandelier above, she said over her shoulder, “You didn’t tell me your gangster business included rubbing people out. That is the phrase, isn’t it? Rubbing people out?”
“That’s the phrase.”
She pushed apart sliding doors and they stepped through into the living room, where the tall windows were. “Sit down anywhere,” she said, shutting the sliding doors again behind them.
The room was done in off-white, with Persian throw rugs and expensive antiques all over the place, and the highest ceiling this side of a basketball court. The flooring gleamed, a towering pier glass stretched up between the front windows, and midway in the long wall opposite the double doors there was a marble fireplace containing the ashes of a real fire.
“Something to drink?” she said. “A nice ruby port?”
“Nothing for me.” He settled on a Victorian chair that looked rickety but wasn’t.
She settled onto an antique davenport nearby. “I suppose,” she said, “you came to ask me to give you some sort of alibi for last night, but I’m terribly afraid I can’t. Even if the times were right, and they aren’t, you know, we were back in the city in plenty of time for you to have gone over to New Jersey and killed that poor man, but even if that weren’t true I still wouldn’t dare admit I spent any part of last night with you in New England. You understand.”
“That isn’t what I’m here about,” Engel said.
“Oh?”
“I’m here to ask you how come you sent Herbert Rose to frame me.”
She smiled, rather uncertainly. “Herbert Rose? Did he see you do the shooting or something?”
“Maybe you didn’t know what a good frame it was,” Engel told her. “Maybe you just thought I’d get into enough trouble to stop me looking for Charlie Brody.”
“Charlie—? All these names, Mr. Engel, I’m sorry—”
“That’s okay,” said Engel. “Don’t let it worry you.”
“Well, I just wish I knew what you were talking about, that’s all.”
Engel said, “The story Rose told my boss was enough to make my boss order me rubbed out. That’s the phrase, Mrs. Kane, rubbed out.”
Her eyes widened. “Oh,” she said. “Surely not. Just for stealing?”
“You just made an admission,” Engel pointed out.
She brushed it away impatiently. “Of course I did. I was the one who talked to Herbert Rose and the others. I did it last night long-distance from Connecticut.”
“While you were at the powder room.”
“Of course. And do you know why?”
“You’re going to tell me why,” Engel said.
“That’s right, I am. Because I like you, that’s why.”
Engel said, “What was that?”
“Forgive me if I give you a swelled head, Mr. Engel, but I must admit I found you a fascinating man. If only, I thought, if only Mr. Engel could get out of that gangster business and into something safer and more acceptable, there’s no telling where my feelings for him might go.”
Engel watched her with his mouth hanging open. “You’re incredible,” he said. “You’re unbelievable.”
“So I thought,” she sailed serenely on, “I thought the thing to do was get you in trouble with all the gangsters so they’d throw you out. And then I could talk to you, guide you, help you, and the first thing you know—”
“Stop it,” said Engel.
“Well, good heavens,” she said, “I didn’t think they’d be mad enough to kill you! Why should they anyway, they’re a bunch of crooks themselves, aren’t they?”
That much Engel believed, that she hadn’t known she was putting a death sentence on him with her little frame. As for the rest, it would wash a lot of hogs. In order to set things straight, therefore, he took a couple minutes out to explain to her just why the frame had been so lethal, and then he took a couple minutes more to explain that the Menchik murder was an additional frame growing out of the first one. “That’s what you did to me,” he said.
“Well, good heavens,” she said. “Good heavens. I’m terribly sorry, I really am. I don’t know what I can do about the murder, but I can surely set things right with your boss. I’ll call Herbert Rose and the others right this minute and tell them to go to your boss and tell him the truth.”
Engel pointed. “There’s the phone,” he said.
“You doubt me?” She got to her feet and went over to the phone and dialed. “Herbert, please,” she said, and then a minute later, “Herbert? This is Mrs. Kane.” Her voice had noticeably harshened. “I’m changing my mind about Mr. Engel. I want you to go back and tell the truth, admit that you lied about Mr. Engel.”
Engel went over and took the phone out of her hand and listened. “—beat me up or some such—” It was the voice of Herbert Rose all right. He handed the phone back to her.
She gave him a look that said “smarty pants,” and into the phone said, “I don’t care about that, Herbert. You tell them the whole truth, except for my name. Don’t tell them my name, just say Mr. Engel will explain that part of it. But tell them you were forced to do it and you’re sorry. And I’ll call the others and tell them the same thing. Yes, I will. You do that right now, Herbert. Yes, Herbert. Good-bye, Herbert.”
She made four more phone calls, all of a same order, all equally legitimate, and when she was done she said, “There! All fixed.”
“Except for the murder rap.”
“Well, your bosses started that, so let them stop it.”
“Yeah, sure.”
“I’ve done what I can,” she said. She seemed to be pouting now, as though she’d expected him to be more pleased.
“There’s still more,” Engel said.
“What more could there be?”
“Why’d you steal Charlie Brody? Where is he now? Why’d you kill Merriweather?”
“Steal — kill — what?”
“No,” said Engel. “You didn’t do it all, that isn’t your style. You send other people to do it for you. Like you sent Rose to take care of me, because he could do it and you couldn’t. So I suppose you had Kurt Brock get the—”
“I never heard that name in my—”
“I saw you go in his apartment yesterday afternoon, when he told you I’d been there. That’s why you called me to have dinner with you, so you could find out what I was up to.”
She seemed really angry now. “I have no idea,” she said, “what you’re talking about.”
“I’d just left him before you got there,” Engel said. “I was still out front.”
“That’s impossible. I would have seen you!”
“You were in too much of a hurry to see Brock!”
“Kurt Brock is nothing to me, nothing. He consoled me in my grief, that’s all, I have no connection with him, I don’t even know why you bring him up.” Now she was distraught, a lace handkerchief being rummaged in her hands. “Why be jealous of him?” she cried. “In comparison with you he’s—”
“Stop that!”
“Don’t shout at me!”
Engel opened his mouth, then shut it and inhaled instead. Then, softly, he said, “All right. I won’t shout. I’ll just tell you what I know, and when I’m done you tell me the rest.”
“I’m beginning,” she said, “to get tired of—”
“If you keep interrupting,” he said, “I’ll have to shout.”
She closed her mouth with a snap, and turned her head to glare toward the pier glass.
Engel said, “Your style is send somebody else to do the job. Send Rose to take care of me. Send Kurt to get Charlie Brady’s body. Did you kill Merriweather yourself, or did you send somebody else to do that, too? And will you tell me for Christ’s sake what you wanted with Charlie Brady’s body?”