“What’d you make up?” I asked.
“I—I hadn’t made it up yet. I wanted to find out about what they could do—you know, the things I asked you—first. I might’ve pretended she came to a little when I was alone with her, while the others were phoning, and told me he did it.”
“You didn’t say you heard something and kept quiet, you said you found something and hid it.”
“But I hadn’t really made up my mind what I—”
“When’d you hear about Wynant’s letter to Macaulay?”
“This afternoon,” she said, “there was a man here from the police.”
“Didn’t he ask you anything about Rosewater?”
“He asked me if I knew him or had ever known him, and I thought I was telling the truth when I said no.”
“Maybe you did,” I said, “and for the first time I now believe you were telling the truth when you said you found some sort of evidence against Wynant.”
She opened her eyes wider. “I don’t understand.”
“Neither do I, but it could be like this: you could’ve found something and decided to hold it out, probably with the idea of selling it to Wynant; then when his letters started people looking you over, you decided to give up the money idea and both pay him back and protect yourself by turning it over to the police; and, finally, when you learn that Jorgensen is Rosewater, you make another about-face and hold it out, not for money this time, but to leave Jorgensen in as bad a spot as possible as punishment for having married you as a trick in his game against Wynant and not for love.”
She smiled calmly and asked: “You really think me capable of anything, don’t you?”
“That doesn’t matter,” I said. “What ought to matter to you is that you’ll probably wind up your life in prison somewhere.”
Her scream was not loud, but it was horrible, and the fear that had been in her face before was as nothing to that there now. She caught my lapels and clung to them, babbling: “Don’t say that, please don’t. Say you don’t think it.” She was trembling so I put an arm around her to keep her from falling.
We did not hear Gilbert until he coughed and asked: “Aren’t you well, Mamma?”
She slowly took her hands down from my lapels and moved back a step and said: “Your mother’s a silly woman.” She was still trembling, but she smiled at me and she made her voice playfuclass="underline" “You’re a brute to frighten me like that.”
I said I was sorry. Gilbert put his coat and hat on a chair and looked from one to the other of us with polite interest. When it became obvious that neither of us was going to tell him anything he coughed again, said, “I’m awfully glad to see you,” and came over to shake hands with me. I said I was glad to see him.
Mimi said: “Your eyes look tired. I bet you’ve been reading all afternoon without your glasses again.” She shook her head and told me: “He’s as unreasonable as his father.”
“Is there any news of Father?” he asked.
“Not since that false alarm about his suicide,” I said. “I suppose you heard it was a false alarm.”
“Yes.” He hesitated. “I’d like to see you for a few minutes before you go.”
“Sure.”
“But you’re seeing him now, darling,” Mimi said. “Are there secrets between you that I’m not supposed to know about?” Her tone was light enough. She had stopped trembling.
“It would bore you.” He picked up his hat and coat, nodded at me, and left the room.
Mimi shook her head again and said: “I don’t understand that child at all. I wonder what he made of our tableau.” She did not seem especially worried. Then, more seriously: “What made you say that, Nick?”
“About you winding up in—?”
“No, never mind.” She shuddered. “I don’t want to hear it. Can’t you stay for dinner? I’ll probably be all alone.”
“I’m sorry I can’t. Now how about this evidence you found?”
“I didn’t really find anything. That was a lie.” She frowned earnestly. “Don’t look at me like that. It really was a lie.”
“So you sent for me just to lie to me?” I asked. “Then why’d you change your mind?”
She chuckled. “You must really like me, Nick, or you wouldn’t always be so disagreeable.”
I could not follow that line of reasoning. I said: “Well, I’ll see what Gilbert wants and run along.”
“I wish you could stay.”
“I’m sorry I can’t,” I said again. “Where’ll I find him?”
“The second door to the— Will they really arrest Chris?”
“That depends,” I told her, “on what kind of answers he gives them. He’ll have to talk pretty straight to stay out.”
“Oh, he’ll—” she broke off, looked sharply at me, asked, “You’re not playing a trick on me? He’s really that Rosewater?”
“The police are sure enough of it.”
“But the man who was here this afternoon didn’t ask a single question about Chris,” she objected. “He only asked me if I knew—”
“They weren’t sure then,” I explained. “It was just a half-idea.”
“But they’re sure now?” I nodded.
“How’d they find out?”
“From a girl he knows,” I said.
“Who?” Her eyes darkened a little, but her voice was under control.
“I can’t remember her name.” Then I went back to the truth: “The one that gave him his alibi for the afternoon of the murder.”
“Alibi?” she asked indignantly. “Do you mean to tell me the police would take the word of a girl like that?”
“Like what?”
“You know what I mean.”
“I don’t. Do you know the girl?”
“No,” she said as if I had insulted her. She narrowed her eyes and lowered her voice until it was not much more than a whisper: “Nick, do you suppose he killed Julia?”
“What would he do that for?”
“Suppose he married me to get revenge on Clyde,” she said, “and— You know he did urge me to come over here and try to get some money from Clyde. Maybe I suggested it—I don’t know—but he did urge me. And then suppose he happened to run into Julia. She knew him, of course, because they worked for Clyde at the same time. And he knew I was going over to see her that afternoon and was afraid if I made her mad she might expose him to me and so— Couldn’t that be?”
“That doesn’t make any sense at all. Besides, you and he left here together that afternoon. He wouldn’t’ve had time to—”
“But my taxicab was awfully slow,” she said, “and then I may have stopped somewhere on—I think I did. I think I stopped at a drug store to get some aspirin.” She nodded energetically. “I remember I did.”
“And he knew you were going to stop, because you had told him,” I suggested. “You can’t go on like this, Mimi. Murder’s serious. It’s nothing to frame people for just because they played tricks on you.”
“Tricks?” she asked, glaring at me. “Why, that…” She called Jorgensen all the usual profane, obscene, and otherwise insulting names, her voice gradually rising until towards the end she was screaming into my face.
When she stopped for breath I said: “That’s pretty cursing, but it—”
“He even had the nerve to hint that I might’ve killed her,” she told me. “He didn’t have nerve enough to ask me, but he kept leading up to it until I told him positively that—well, that I didn’t do it.”
“That’s not what you started to say. You told him positively what?”
She stamped her foot. “Stop heckling me.”
“All right and to hell with you,” I said. “Coming here wasn’t my idea.” I started towards my hat and coat.
She ran after me, caught my arm. “Please, Nick, I’m sorry. It’s this rotten temper of mine. I don’t know what I—”
Gilbert came in and said: “I’ll go along part of the way with you.”
Mimi scowled at him. “You were listening.”
“How could I help it, the way you screamed?” he asked. “Can I have some money?”
“And we haven’t finished talking,” she said.
I looked at my watch. “I’ve got to run, Mimi. It’s late.”