“But he wasn’t my husband,” the woman interrupted, with the simple finality of one announcing a very definite and self-evident fact.
“Then you have flown here from Nevada because of a mistake?” Selby asked. “That certainly is...”
He stopped mid-sentence. “Good Lord,” he said, and sat down in the swivel chair beside his desk to stare dazedly from the woman to Rex Brandon’s frowning countenance.
“You see,” the sheriff explained, “he had cards and a driving license in his wallet, and there was a letter he’d started to write to you, so we thought, of course, he was Charles Brower.”
“He isn’t my husband,” the woman insisted in the same tone of dogged finality. “I never saw him in my life.”
“But,” Selby pointed out, his mind groping through a sudden maze of contradictory facts, “why should he have written you if... How did he sign the register in the hotel, Rex?”
“As the Reverend Charles Brower, 613 Center Street, Millbank, Nevada.”
Selby reached for his hat. “Come on, Rex,” he said. “We’re going down to get to the bottom of this thing.”
The woman in the faded brown suit, with brown gloved hands still folded, upon her lap, said, with dogged determination, “He is not my husband. Who’s going to pay my traveling expenses from Nevada here? Don’t think I’ll quietly turn around and go home without getting paid my carfare, because I won’t. I suppose I really could make serious trouble, you know. It was a great shock to me.”
Chapter IV
A trimly efficient young woman clad in a serviceable tailored suit sat waiting in the outer office as Selby started out.
“Hello, Sylvia,” he said. “Did you want to see me?”
“Yes.”
“I’m frightfully busy right now. I’ll see you sometime this afternoon.”
“Sometime this afternoon won’t do,” she told him.
“Why not?”
Her laughing, reddish-brown eyes smiled up at him, but there was a touch of determination about her jaw. “You are now talking,” she said, “to Miss Sylvia Martin, a reporter on The Clarion, who has been ordered to get an interview or else.”
“But can’t it wait, Sylvia?”
“Not a chance,” she told him.
“But, hang it, it’ll have to wait.”
She turned resignedly toward the door and said, “Oh, all right, if that’s your attitude, of course I’m not running the paper. My boss sent me out to get the interview, and he said it was vitally important; that if you wouldn’t co-operate with us... well, you know how he is— If you want to antagonize him, it’s all right with, me.”
The sheriff frowned at Selby and said, “Of course, Doug, I could start investigating this thing and...”
Selby sighed, turned back toward his office and said, “Okay, come on in, Sylvia.”
She laughed when the door of his private office had clicked shut behind them. “Forgive me for lying, Doug?” she asked.
“About what?”
“About being sent to get an interview.”
“Weren’t you?”
“No, I was just playing a hunch.”
His face showed swift annoyance.
“Now don’t be like that,” she told him, “because it isn’t nice. Don’t take the duties of your office too seriously.”
“Snap out of it, Sylvia,” he told her. “Just what are you trying to do? I’m working on an important case, and you’ve thrown me off my stride.”
She crossed her knees, smoothed her skirt, produced a notebook and pencil and started making intricate little patterns on the upper left-hand corner of the page. “You know, Doug,” she said, “The Clarion supported you in the campaign. The Blade fought you. We want the breaks.”
“You’ll get them as soon as there are any breaks.”
“How about this minister’s wife?” she asked. “I’ve heard she won’t identify the body.”
“Where did you get that idea?”
“A little bird told me.”
“Well,” he asked, “what of it?”
Her eyes rested steadily on his. “Doug,” she said slowly, “you know what an awful thing it would be, if some important case turned up right at the start and you muffed it.”
He nodded. “What makes you think I’m muffing it, Sylvia?”
“Call it womanly intuition, if you want. You know how hard I worked for you during the campaign, and how proud I am you’re elected. I...”
He laughed, and said, “Okay, Sylvia, you win. Here’s the low-down. That woman was Mrs. Mary Brower, of Millbank, Nevada, and she says the body isn’t that of her husband. And she’s inclined to be peeved about everything.”
“Where does that leave you?” she asked.
“Frankly,” he told her, “I don’t know.”
“But didn’t the dead man have a letter in his typewriter plainly addressed to his dear wife? And wasn’t the envelope addressed to Mrs. Charles Brower at Millbank?”
“That’s right,” Doug admitted.
“And what does that mean?”
“It might mean either one of two things,” Selby said slowly. “If the man who registered as Brower wanted to impress some visitor that he really was Brower, it would have been quite natural for him to write this letter and leave it in the typewriter as a part of the deception. Then he might have left the room for a moment, figuring his visitor would read the letter while he was gone.”
Sylvia Martin nodded her head slowly and said, “Yes, that’s right. Let me see if I can guess the other alternative, Doug.”
“I wish you would,” he told her. “It’s got me stumped. It’s so wildly improbable and yet so thoroughly logical that...”
She held up her hand for silence, frowned at him in thoughtful concentration for a moment, then suddenly exclaimed, “I’ve got it.”
“What is it?”
“If someone was in the room after the man had died and wanted to make it appear the cause of death was an overdose of sleeping medicine, he couldn’t have hit on a better scheme than to write a letter like that and leave it in the typewriter. The natural person to whom such a letter should be written would be the man’s wife, and, if he’d thought the man was Charles Brower, of Millbank, he’d have...”
“Exactly,” Selby interrupted. “Thank Heavens you agree with me on that. It seemed such a bizarre theory that I couldn’t even entertain it.”
“But, if that’s true,” she pointed out, “the man who wrote the letter must have known the wife. Otherwise, he couldn’t have known the street address.”
Selby said, “No, the man could have gotten the address from the hotel registrations. However, supposing he didn’t, let’s now take a look at Mary Brower, a matronly, capable woman who certainly wouldn’t be cavorting around with people who’d want to murder her husband. She’s obstinate, perhaps a bit selfish, but certainly no Cleopatra.”
Sylvia Martin was staring at him with wide, fascinated eyes. “But let’s suppose you’re wrong, Doug. Suppose someone did know her rather well and wanted her husband out of the way. Suppose this dead man sensed something of the situation and was a close friend of the husband. The husband didn’t know anything at all about what was going on, so this friend came to the hotel to take the part of the husband, and in order to do so masqueraded as Charles Brower.”
Selby said slowly, “That’s a nice theory, Sylvia, and if you publish any part of it, your newspaper will be defendant in about a dozen libel suits. This Mrs. Brower looks like a perfectly capable woman.”