“But Ellicia herself throws a bug in the deal by going to the Wardmore Arms apartment and talking with this Godiva. So Godiva turns on the person who hired her when this person tries to tell Godiva that the deal is off, now that my wife knows. Godiva is having none of this being brushed off. She’s been hired by a person who’s supposed to have plenty of sugar himself. Godiva threatens to reveal the whole mess, even if she does go to jail for it. Our nosy character who hired Godiva visions the publicity, the wreckage of his life. He is having none of that; but he can’t pay off to keep Godiva quiet about this nasty deal this so-called reputable character has engineered. So my gun is swiped and Codiva is murdered. That’s the only out, for our nosy friend. He plans to make the kill clean by planting it on me. Or summing the whole thing up, our nosy friend has engineered a scheme of blackmail. It’s blown up in his face, degenerated to the point that the tables are turned and our plotter kills and switches the murder on me, since I had a ready made motive, out of sheer self-protection. Still simple, eh?”
“And the notes, Rick?” Ellicia said.
“Three people had access to them, at the time they were of prime importance, which of course was after the murder. Once the murder was done, the notes could hang me or their absence save me. Perry Lance is the lad who swiped the notes in the first place.”
Two dozen pairs of eyes turned on Perry. His ice chattered in his glass. “But somebody stole them from me. I… I…”
“Sure,” I said. “You wanted the notes to put the final knot in the noose around my neck. You were afraid Ellicia would never turn the notes over to the cops, and that’s what you wanted to happen, when you spotted them on our desk. But another person spotted them. You heat the other person to them, but the other party didn’t give up, entered your apartment, got them.”
“Who was this other party?” Archie Satler inquired.
“It was Jean Darlan,” I said.
She gripped her glass tight. “You’ll never prove it.”
“Why not? It had to be you. Archie couldn’t have gone into Perry’s apartment tonight while Perry was out, after Perry got the notes, because Perry wasn’t out of his apartment until nine-thirty, and Archie was on a bandstand working then.
“You were going to cook me good, weren’t you, Jean? If the D.A. didn’t get enough evidence to got an indictment against me for the murder of Godiva Hoffman, those notes would be worth damn near every dime I own; if the D.A. did get an indictment on other evidence, you’d see that he got the notes, which would finish me and leave you in safety, with the Godiva Hoffman murder solved, as far as the law was concerned. You either had a prime blackmail weapon or safety, regardless of the way the dice fell.”
She sat down slowly on the piano bench. She looked from face to face. “You’ll never prove it,” she said again.
“Sure,” I said. “Godiva Hoffman was somebody. Human beings don’t just disappear without a trace. They’ll identify her, Jean, eventually. They’ll find who hired her; they’ll connect you with her, and those notes in your possession won’t help you any.”
“No,” she whispered, her face falling apart, “why would I do such a thing?”
“For money. You wanted a pile of money. Without money you could never keep your promise to Archie to open for him a club of his own. Once he found you didn’t have money, he’d drop you like a hot potatoe. You couldn’t stand that. You wanted Archie above all things, and to keep him you had to have money. The cops will see the motive easily enough, Jean, when they see some of those account-badly-overdue notices you’ve received from some of our better stores and shops.”
She hung her head and cried, and nobody said a word. Archie Satler moved away from her. He should have been punched in the jaw. She was a murderess, but she had done it for him, and now he wouldn’t even touch her. Tomorrow he’d be hunting another one to put on the string.
The cops came after awhile and took Jean away, and Ellicia told the hushed magpies to go home. They all shuffled out but Perry Lance.
Ellicia told him, “Perry, my husband and I would prefer to be alone.”
“But Ellicia, I’d like to apologize about those notes. I…”
I kept thinking he’d wanted to see me in the electric chair. I walked over and punched him in the nose and so help me, he didn’t bleed blue at all.
I told him I’d like to do it again, but Perry wasn’t having any. He jammed his linen handkerchief against his nose, got his hat and left.
Ellicia ran her finger along the piano. I looked around the room. Somehow even old J. P. had faded out. We were alone, Ellicia and I. “Rick,” she said, “I’ll have coffee on the kitchen table tomorrow night when you get home. Remember everything you do at the office tomorrow, so you can tell me all about it, will you?”
I said, “Sure.”
Her eyes changed a little and she put her arms around my neck and pulled my head down close to hers. Just before she kissed me, she said, “If you ever dream up another Godiva Hoffman, I’ll break a chair over your head. And if you should be foolish enough even to think of renting an apartment for a flesh and blood female, you know what I’d do to you then, don’t you?”
“I have an idea,” I sighed. Pity the poor guy married to a possessive, jealous dame!