“That will come later. I weighed what I perceived to be the various motives and the degree of stimulus behind each, considered the accusations that had been made, either to me or to Mr. Goodwin, and proceeded.”
“Let’s speed this up, dammit!” It was Keith Billings again, whom I had seated well beyond the reach of his old sparring partner, Franklin Ott. Debra Mitchell watched all of this exchange with cold interest. Maybe she was casting an episode of Entre Nous.
“All right, I shall begin with you,” Wolfe told Billings. “Your dislike for Mr. Childress was manifest and widely known. From the beginning, the editor-writer relationship was extremely fractious. He was hostile to your suggestions and your attempts to strengthen his prose — particularly his plot structures. His friendship with your superior, Mr. Vinson, exacerbated the situation. Finally, the writer demanded a new editor, and that demand was met by Mr. Vinson. You resigned in anger from Monarch. Your hostility toward Mr. Childress increased when he excoriated you in an article that was read throughout the publishing community. Your career had been seriously damaged. Many would consider that series of events an adequate motive for murder.”
“Bunk,” Billings howled. “I landed on my feet after I left Monarch. My career has been doing just fine.”
“Has it?” Wolfe raised his eyebrows. “Mr. Hobbs, you are a presumably disinterested observer of the publishing universe. Is Mr. Billings’s current position of equal status to his former one?”
Hobbs chuckled smugly, a chilling sound. “By no means. In the first place, Monarch is an infinitely more prestigious house than Westman & Lane. Second, Mr. Billings has far less responsibility now than he had at Monarch. Also, you should know that the rumor on the street is that Westman is getting ready to dump him.”
“That’s a goddamn lie!” Billings screeched, lunging across Patricia Royce toward Hobbs. Purley Stebbins neatly grabbed the editor from the rear by his belt and forced him down into his chair with a thud. “Don’t get up again,” Purley said in a tone that left no doubt that he was in charge of maintaining order. Billings glowered at a spot on the floor between his feet, his face and neck a fiery red.
Wolfe finished his first bottle of beer and started on the second. “Miss Wingfield, you had known Mr. Childress longer than anyone else here. That relationship — a blood relationship — was renewed when Mr. Childress returned to his home in Indiana for a protracted period to attend to his mother during her final illness. While he was there, certain events transpired that pointed to the possibility of a permanent liaison between you.”
Debra Mitchell twitched. This news had clearly penetrated her impassive facade. “And what events would those be?” she demanded shrilly.
“They are not germane at present,” Wolfe replied crisply. “But Mr. Childress eschewed such a relationship with his cousin, which was a bitter pill for her — one that might be deemed a goad to violence.” ‘
“Bull. You don’t even know me!” Clarice protested.
Wolfe lifted his shoulders a fraction of an inch and let them drop. “Did you not visit Mr. Childress at his domicile in Greenwich Village on numerous occasions, pleading, sometimes angrily, for a reconciliation?”
She toyed with a silver bracelet on her wrist, then looked up, her face anguished. “That doesn’t mean I shot him. I loved him,” she said hoarsely.
“That’s the first I’ve ever heard any of this,” Debra Mitchell told Clarice in an accusing tone. “In fact, I’ve never even heard of you. Charles never mentioned you — not once.”
“I’m not surprised to hear that,” Clarice replied, still subdued. “He was the father of my baby girl, and he didn’t want anything to do with her — or with me.”
“I don’t believe it,” Debra said loudly as everyone else started jabbering excitedly. Wolfe scowled, waiting for the din to subside. When it did, he said, “Miss Wingfield, you chose to divulge information that I was content to omit from this discussion. But since you have divulged it, I will only say that my knowledge of it intensified my interest in you as a suspect.”
“I’m not ashamed of what happened in Indiana between me and Charles.” Both her tone and her expression were fiercely defiant.
“So noted.” Wolfe turned toward Wilbur Hobbs. “Sir, you incurred the anger of Charles Childress with your acerbic reviews of his books.”
Hobbs chuckled again. “Not the first writer who’s gotten mad at me, and likely not the last.”
“Indeed. But few if any authors have lashed back as did Mr. Childress. His denunciation of you in print was scathing.”
“And defamatory,” Hobbs added without rancor, stroking his mustache.
“Perhaps. And prisons are filled with inmates whose motives for murder were far less compelling than yours.”
The reviewer’s smug expression did not change. “Huh! Childress’s diatribe did not harm me in the slightest. It’s true that I didn’t think much of him as a writer, but I wished him no ill.”
“So you now say,” Wolfe replied impassively. “You were not so mellow when you sat in this room previously and spoke of your anger toward Mr. Childress and your contemplation of a lawsuit.”
“I have had time to reflect,” Hobbs said amiably.
Wolfe glowered, turning his attention toward the agent. “Mr. Ott, you, too, suffered in print at the hands of Mr. Childress and his acid-tipped pen. He impugned you and your professional capabilities, and as an apparent result, you lost other writers that you had represented.”
“You can’t prove that,” Ott argued, shifting in his chair and gingerly touching his bandage.
“I believe I can, sir,” Wolfe retorted. “Further, there is the curious episode of the fracas in the restaurant between you and Mr. Billings. One might be tempted to surmise that you baited the man so that he would strike you and thus appear outraged — and by extension, guilty — of the incendiary accusation you leveled: that he had murdered Mr. Childress.”
“I had too much to drink.” Ott waved away Wolfe’s statement with a hand. “I’m not proud of the way I mouthed off, but it was the liquor talking.”
“Or perhaps it was a stratagem on your part, the tactic of one who seeks to shift suspicion elsewhere.”
“Nonsense. That’s the kind of logic that crops up in bad detective novels.”
“The novels of writers you represent, perhaps?” Wolfe posed, raising his eyebrows. “Miss Mitchell, you had been affianced to Charles Childress for — what — six months?”
“Almost, yes,” she said. “We were to be married in September.”
“Yet Miss Royce insists that he was about to terminate your engagement.”
Debra Mitchell turned and looked over her left shoulder at Patricia, who was in the row of chairs behind her. “In your dreams,” she sneered at the other woman. “You always wanted him yourself — don’t deny it. And you probably used every opportunity to turn him against me, you bitch.”
“That’s a lie,” Patricia retorted. “I didn’t have to say anything. He finally saw you for what you are, a—”
“Silence!” Wolfe roared. It was hard enough on him, having three women under his roof at once, but feminine bickering stretches him to the limit of his tolerance. “Miss Mitchell, at least one other person — someone who is not acquainted with Miss Royce — also reported that Mr. Childress was about to end your relationship — and perhaps already had.” He was referring to the conversation I’d had with Clarice over coffee in Hoboken.
“So you say. Maybe... maybe Charles and I were having some, well... differences. Some differences, differences...” She seemed to crumble, burying her head in her hands. It was not pretty to behold.