Macaulay shrugged. “You know as much about it as I do. I haven’t seen him since October.” He drank again. “How long are you going to be in town?”
“Till after New Year’s,” I told him and went to the telephone to ask room service for menus.
3
Nora and I went to the opening of Honeymoon at the Little Theatre that night and then to a party given by some people named Freeman or Fielding or something. I felt pretty low when she called me the next morning. She gave me a newspaper and a cup of coffee and said: “Read that.”
I patiently read a paragraph or two, then put the paper down and took a sip of coffee. “Fun’s fun,” I said, “but right now I’d swap you all the interviews with Mayor-elect O’Brien ever printed—and throw in the Indian picture—for a slug of whis—”
“Not that, stupid.” She put a finger on the paper. “That.”
INVENTOR’S SECRETARY
MURDERED IN APARTMENT
JULIA WOLF’S BULLET-RIDDLED BODY FOUND;
POLICE SEEK HER EMPLOYER, CLYDE WYNANT
The bullet-riddled body of Julia Wolf, thirty-two-year-old confidential secretary to Clyde Miller Wynant, well-known inventor, was discovered late yesterday afternoon in the dead woman’s apartment at 411 East Fifty-fourth St. by Mrs. Christian Jorgensen, divorced wife of the inventor, who had gone there in an attempt to learn her former husband’s present address.
Mrs. Jorgensen, who returned Monday after a six-year stay in Europe, told police that she heard feeble groans when she rang the murdered woman’s doorbell, whereupon she notified an elevator boy, Mervin Holly, who called Walter Meany, apartment-house superintendent. Miss Wolf was lying on the bedroom floor with four .32-caliber bullet-wounds in her chest when they entered the apartment, and died without having recovered consciousness before police and medical aid arrived.
Herbert Macaulay, Wynant’s attorney, told the police that he had not seen the inventor since October. He stated that Wynant called him on the telephone yesterday and made an appointment, but failed to keep it; and disclaimed any knowledge of his client’s whereabouts. Miss Wolf, Macaulay stated, had been in the inventor’s employ for the past eight years. The attorney said he knew nothing about the dead woman’s family or private affairs and could throw no light on her murder.
The bullet-wounds could not have been self-inflicted, according to …
The rest of it was the usual police department handout.
“Do you suppose he killed her?” Nora asked when I put the paper down again.
“Wynant? I wouldn’t be surprised. He’s batty as hell.”
“Did you know her?”
“Yes. How about a drop of something to cut the phlegm?”
“What was she like?”
“Not bad,” I said. “She wasn’t bad-looking and she had a lot of sense and a lot of nerve—and it took both to live with that guy.”
“She lived with him?”
“Yes. I want a drink, please. That is, it was like that when I knew them.”
“Why don’t you have some breakfast first? Was she in love with him or was it just business?”
“I don’t know. It’s too early for breakfast.”
When Nora opened the door to go out, the dog came in and put her front feet on the bed, her face in my face. I rubbed her head and tried to remember something Wynant had once said to me, something about women and dogs. It was not the woman-spaniel-walnut-tree line. I could not remember what it was, but there seemed to be some point in trying to remember. Nora returned with two drinks and another question: “What’s he like?”
“Tall—over six feet—and one of the thinnest men I’ve ever seen. He must be about fifty now, and his hair was almost white when I knew him. Usually needs a haircut, ragged brindle mustache, bites his fingernails.” I pushed the dog away to reach for my drink.
“Sounds lovely. What were you doing with him?”
“A fellow who’d worked for him accused him of stealing some kind of invention from him. Rosewater was his name. He tried to shake Wynant down by threatening to shoot him, bomb his house, kidnap his children, cut his wife’s throat—I don’t know what all—if he didn’t come across. We never caught him—must’ve scared him off. Anyway, the threats stopped and nothing happened.”
Nora stopped drinking to ask: “Did Wynant really steal it?”
“Tch, tch, tch,” I said. “This is Christmas Eve: try to think good of your fellow man.”
4
That afternoon I took Asta for a walk, explained to two people that she was a Schnauzer and not a cross between a Scottie and an Irish terrier, stopped at Jim’s for a couple of drinks, ran into Larry Crowley, and brought him back to the Normandie with me. Nora was pouring cocktails for the Quinns, Margot Innes, a man whose name I did not catch, and Dorothy Wynant. Dorothy said she wanted to talk to me, so we carried our cocktails into the bedroom.
She came to the point right away. “Do you think my father killed her, Nick?”
“No,” I said. “Why should I?”
“Well, the police have— Listen, she was his mistress, wasn’t she?”
I nodded. “When I knew them.”
She stared at her glass while saying, “He’s my father. I never liked him. I never liked Mamma.” She looked up at me. “I don’t like Gilbert.” Gilbert was her brother.
“Don’t let that worry you. Lots of people don’t like their relatives.”
“Do you like them?”
“My relatives?”
“Mine.” She scowled at me. “And stop talking to me as if I was still twelve.”
“It’s not that,” I explained. “I’m getting tight.”
“Well, do you?”
I shook my head. “You were all right, just a spoiled kid. I could get along without the rest of them.”
“What’s the matter with us?” she asked, not argumentatively, but as if she really wanted to know.
“Different things. Your—”
Harrison Quinn opened the door and said: “Come on over and play some Ping-Pong, Nick.”
“In a little while.”
“Bring Beautiful along.” He leered at Dorothy and went away.
She said: “I don’t suppose you know Jorgensen.”
“I know a Nels Jorgensen.”
“Some people have all the luck. This one’s named Christian. He’s a honey. That’s Mamma—divorces a lunatic and marries a gigolo.” Her eyes became wet. She caught her breath in a sob and asked: “What am I going to do, Nick?” Her voice was a frightened child’s.
I put an arm around her and made what I hoped were comforting sounds. She cried on my lapel. The telephone beside the bed began to ring. In the next room “Rise and Shine” was coming through the radio. My glass was empty. I said: “Walk out on them.”
She sobbed again. “You can’t walk out on yourself.”
“Maybe I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Please don’t tease me,” she said humbly.
Nora, coming in to answer the telephone, looked questioningly at me. I made a face at her over the girl’s head. When Nora said “Hello” into the telephone, the girl stepped quickly back away from me and blushed. “I—I’m sorry,” she stammered, “I didn’t—”
Nora smiled sympathetically at her. I said: “Don’t be a dope.” The girl found her handkerchief and dabbed at her eyes with it.
Nora spoke into the telephone. “Yes … I’ll see if he’s in. Who’s calling, please?” She put a hand over the mouthpiece and addressed me: “It’s a man named Norman. Do you want to talk to him?”
I said I didn’t know and took the telephone. “Hello.”
A somewhat harsh voice said: “Mr. Charles? … Mr. Charles, I understand that you were formerly connected with the Trans-American Detective Agency.”