“Don’t be silly.”
“Was it Gloster?”
“Now aren’t you smart!”
Clane said, “Your husband carries quite a bit of insurance. It’s payable to you. Your husband is dead.”
She stiffened into frozen attention. “Ricardo dead?”
“You know he is.”
“Then if you know that, you must know why he was hiding.”
Clane said nothing.
“And why I was hiding,” she added.
“You were hiding for the same reason he was?”
“Of course. He got me on the phone, told me to get under cover where I couldn’t be traced. The fat was in the fire.”
“Do you mean,” Clane asked, “that he had murdered Gloster?”
She said, “If you know so much, why don’t you know more?”
“I’m asking you.”
“Ricardo is dead?”
“So I understand from the police.”
“How?”
“I don’t know the details. A police inspector inadvertently let the cat out of the bag.”
“That Ricardo was dead?”
“Yes.”
“When did he die?”
“I don’t know.”
For a long moment she studied him with thought-narrowed eyes. Then she said suddenly, “That’s different. Let’s go.”
“Where?”
“Back home.”
Clane said, “You don’t seem to show any grief.”
Her manner was scornful. “I thought I was dealing with someone of intelligence. You know as well as I do there’s no use showing any grief over something that has happened. Furthermore, the women who have hysterics and sob and shriek and whoop and want to be comforted are the ones who are putting on an act. I know the way I feel and that’s all that counts.”
Clane said dryly, “The position of the police is that you stand to profit by your husband’s death. You can’t expect them to overlook that.”
“What are you getting at?”
“Surely you can put two and two together?”
“Meaning that I killed him?”
Clane met her eyes. “You could hardly expect the police to overlook the obvious.”
She took the half-filled glass of gin, poured it into the slopjar, took a hat out of the closet, adjusted it in front of the cheap wavy mirror, put on her coat, and said, “Let’s go.”
“After all,” Clane said, “before you...”
“Let’s go. Let’s face the police. Let’s get it over with. Surely you weren’t bluffing, Mr. Clane?”
Chu Kee blandly held the door open. Clane stood to one side to let the women precede him.
Her head held high, Mrs. Ricardo Taonon sailed through the door and marched down the corridor, no longer the blowsy blonde who had retired for a gin binge in a cheap Chinese hotel, but a trim, smartly clothed woman, keeping her own counsel and playing her own cards.
“I think,” Clane said, “we’ll call Inspector Malloy first.”
“Call anyone you damn please,” Mrs. Ricardo Taonon snapped at him. “I’m going home. And if you don’t call the police, I will.”
Nineteen
The eight-room apartment of Ricardo Taonon was furnished with objects of Oriental art. Some of these were museum pieces, carved ivories and polished jades. The place might well have been the residence of a wealthy Hong Kong merchant. And in this setting Daphne Taonon assumed an assurance of manner which held just a trace of condescension. Apparently Inspector Malloy was impressed, despite himself.
Mrs. Taonon said to Inspector Malloy, “Let’s understand each other right at the start. Mr. Clane told me you were looking for me, that you wanted to question me.”
“That’s right.”
“He came to me and started to ask questions. These two friends of his, the Chinese man and, I understand, his daughter, were with him.”
“Very interesting,” Malloy said. “How did he know where to find you?”
“I don’t know.”
Malloy turned to Clane and raised his eyebrows.
“Deductive reasoning,” Clane said.
“Very, very interesting,” Inspector Malloy observed. “I’ll ask you more about that after a while. In the meantime, I want to talk with Mrs. Taonon. By the way, did Mr. Clane say what the police wanted to ask you about?”
“My husband’s death.”
“Well, well, well,” Malloy said. “And how did Mr. Clane know that your husband was dead?”
“I don’t know. He told me that my husband had been — killed.”
“Murdered?”
“I gathered that was what he meant.”
“Well, now,” Malloy said, “perhaps that deductive reasoning of Mr. Clane’s has gone a lot farther than I had thought at the time. You see, Mr. Clane himself had been under suspicion and we gave him a clean bill of health only a short time ago because we thought he’d told us all he knew. But it seems he knew your husband had been murdered and he knew where to find you to tell you about it.”
“Isn’t that the truth?”
“What?”
“About my husband?”
“I wouldn’t know, ma’am. When was the last time you saw him?”
“Last night.”
“Perhaps you can fix it a little closer than that as to time?”
“About ten o’clock. He was called to the telephone.”
“Know who was talking?”
“No.”
“And what happened?”
“My husband seemed very much excited, very much put out about something. He also seemed a little alarmed. He put on his hat and coat and went out.”
“And didn’t come back?”
“Not to my knowledge.”
“By the way, where were you?”
“I went out.”
“Where?”
She said, “A friend of my husband’s telephoned and was very anxious to see him. He asked me to drive him to a place where I thought my husband might be. I drove him there.”
“Find your husband?”
“No.”
“Who was this friend of your husband’s?”
“I prefer not to answer that question.”
“Not some friend of yours?”
“I said that he was a friend of my husband. His friendship for me was incidental.”
“And how long were you gone?”
“Well, after I left that friend, I did some things on my own.”
“What?”
She shook her head.
“What time did you get back?”
“Some time this morning.”
“Left your car here and then you yourself left almost immediately?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“Where this gentleman found me.”
“And where was that?”
She met Inspector Malloy’s eyes. “It was in a cheap Chinese hotel,” she said. “I was registered under the name of Mrs. George L. Brown and I had used the best disguise I could on a moment’s notice. I tried to make myself look like one of the women who frequent places of that sort.”
“Why?”
“Because I was afraid.”
“Of what?”
“I can’t tell you that.”
Malloy said, “You came back to this apartment in the morning?”
“Yes.”
“And how soon did you leave?”
“Within five minutes.”
“Not in your car?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because I had no place to leave my car. I wanted to go where I couldn’t be traced.”
“Again why?”
“Because I tell you I was frightened.”
“You weren’t frightened until you came back here and found your husband wasn’t here?”
“Well... perhaps so, yes.”
“How long was it after your husband left before you left?”
“Not very long.”
“I’m afraid I’ve got to know what frightened you,” Malloy said.
“That is a personal matter.”
“And it wasn’t until Mr. Clane told you your husband was dead that you were willing to come back?”