“Practically.”
“But that’s ridiculous,” she insisted.
“Be sensible, Mimi,” I said. “Suppose Wynant was killed three months ago and his corpse disguised as somebody else. He’s supposed to have gone away leaving powers of attorney with Macaulay. All right, then, the estate’s completely in Macaulay’s hands forever and ever, or at least until he finishes plundering it, because you can’t even—”
Macaulay stood up saying: “I know what you’re getting at, Charles, but I’m—”
“Take it easy,” Guild told him. “Let him have his say out.”
“He killed Wynant and he killed Julia and he killed Nunheim,” I assured Mimi. “What do you want to do? Be next on the list? You ought to know damned well that once you’ve come to his aid by saying you’ve seen Wynant alive—because that’s his weak spot, being the only person up to now who claims to have seen Wynant since October—he’s not going to take any chances on having you change your mind—not when it’s only a matter of knocking you off with the same gun and putting the blame on Wynant. And what are you doing it for? For those few crummy bonds in the drawer, a fraction of what you get your hands on through your children if we prove Wynant’s dead.”
Mimi turned to Macaulay and said: “You son of a bitch.” Guild gaped at her, more surprised by that than by anything else that had been said.
Macaulay started to move. I did not wait to see what he meant to do, but slammed his chin with my left fist. The punch was all right, it landed solidly and dropped him, but I felt a burning sensation on my left side and knew I had torn the bullet-wound open. “What do you want me to do?” I growled at Guild. “Put him in cellophane for you?”
31
It was nearly three in the morning when I let myself into our apartment at the Normandie. Nora, Dorothy, and Larry Crowley were in the living-room, Nora and Larry playing backgammon, Dorothy reading a newspaper.
“Did Macaulay really kill them?” Nora asked immediately.
“Yes. Did the morning papers have anything about Wynant?”
Dorothy said: “No, just about Macaulay being arrested. Why?”
“Macaulay killed him too.”
Nora said, “Really?” Larry said, “I’ll be damned.” Dorothy began to cry. Nora looked at Dorothy in surprise.
Dorothy sobbed: “I want to go home to Mamma.”
Larry said not very eagerly: “I’ll be glad to take you home if…”
Dorothy said she wanted to go. Nora fussed over her, but did not try to talk her out of going. Larry, trying not to look too unwilling, found his hat and coat. He and Dorothy left. Nora shut the door behind them and leaned against it. “Explain that to me, Mr. Charalambides,” she said. I shook my head.
She sat on the sofa beside me. “Now out with it. If you skip a single word, I’ll—”
“I’d have to have a drink before I could do any talking.”
She cursed me and brought me a drink. “Has he confessed?”
“Why should he? You can’t plead guilty of murder in the first degree. There were too many murders—and at least two of them were too obviously done in cold blood—for the District Attorney to let him plead guilty of second-degree murder. There’s nothing for him to do but fight it out.”
“But he did commit them?”
“Sure.”
She pushed my glass down from my mouth. “Stop stalling and tell me about it.”
“Well, it figures out that he and Julia had been gypping Wynant for some time. He’d dropped a lot of money in the market and he’d found out about her past—as Morelli hinted—and the pair of them teamed up on the old man. We’re sicking accountants on Macaulay’s books and Wynant’s and shouldn’t have much trouble tracing some of the loot from one to the other.”
“Then you don’t know positively that he was robbing Wynant?”
“Sure we know. It doesn’t click any other way. The chances are Wynant was going away on a trip the 3rd of October, because he did draw five thousand dollars out of the bank in cash, but he didn’t close up his shop and give up his apartment. That was done by Macaulay a few days later. Wynant was killed at Macaulay’s in Scarsdale on the night of the 3rd. We know that because on the morning of the 4th, when Macaulay’s cook, who slept at home, came to work, Macaulay met her at the door with some kind of trumped-up complaint and two weeks’ wages and fired her on the spot, not letting her in the house to find any corpses or bloodstains.”
“How did you find that out? Don’t skip details.”
“Ordinary routine. Naturally after we grabbed him we went to his office and house to see what we could find out—you know, where-were-you-on-the-night-of-June-6,-1894-stuff—and the present cook said she’d only been working for him since the 8th of October, and that led to that. We also found a table with a very faint trace of what we hope is human blood not quite scrubbed out. The scientific boys are making shavings of it now to see if they can soak out any results for us.” (It turned out to be beef blood.)
“Then you’re not sure he—”
“Stop saying that. Of course we’re sure. That’s the only way it clicks. Wynant had found out that Julia and Macaulay were gypping him and also thought, rightly or wrongly that Julia and Macaulay were cheating on him—and we know he was jealous—so he went up there to confront him with whatever proof he had, and Macaulay, with prison looking him in the face, killed the old man. Now don’t say we’re not sure. It doesn’t make any sense otherwise. Well, there he is with a corpse, one of the harder things to get rid of. Can I stop to take a swallow of whisky?”
“Just one,” Nora said. “But this is just a theory, isn’t it?”
“Call it any name you like. It’s good enough for me.”
“But I thought everybody was supposed to be considered innocent until they were proved guilty and if there was any reasonable doubt, they—”
“That’s for juries, not detectives. You find the guy you think did the murder and you slam him in the can and let everybody know you think he’s guilty and put his picture all over newspapers, and the Distria Attorney builds up the best theory he can on what information you’ve got and meanwhile you pick up additional details here and there, and people who recognize his picture in the paper—as well as people who’d think he was innocent if you hadn’t arrested him—come in and tell you things about him and presently you’ve got him sitting on the electric chair.” (Two days later a woman in Brooklyn identified Macaulay as a George Foley who for the past three months had been renting an apartment from her.)
“But that seems so loose.”
“When the murders are committed by mathematicians,” I said, “you can solve them by mathematics. Most of them aren’t and this one wasn’t. I don’t want to go against your idea of what’s right and wrong, but when I say he probably dissected the body so he could carry it into town in bags I’m only saying what seems most probable. That would be on the 6th of October or later, because it wasn’t until then that he laid off the two mechanics Wynant had working in the shop—Prentice and McNaughton—and shut it up. So he buried Wynant under the floor, buried him with a fat man’s clothes and a lame man’s stick and a belt marked D. W. Q., all arranged so they wouldn’t get too much of the lime—or whatever he used to eat off the dead man’s features and flesh—on them, and he re-cemented the floor over the grave. Between police routine and publicity we’ve got more than a fair chance of finding out where he bought or otherwise got the clothes and stick and the cement.” (We traced the cement to him later—he had bought it from a coal and wood dealer uptown—but had no luck with the other things.)
“I hope so,” she said, not too hopefully.
“So now that’s taken care of. By renewing the lease on the shop and keeping it vacant—supposedly waiting for Wynant to return—he can make sure—reasonably sure—that nobody will discover the grave, and if it is accidentally discovered, then fat Mr. D. W. Q.—by that time Wynant’s bones would be pretty bare and you can’t tell whether a man was thin or fat by his skeleton—was murdered by Wynant, which explains why Wynant has made himself scarce. That taken care of, Macaulay forges the power of attorney and, with Julia’s help, settles down to the business of gradually transferring the late Clyde’s money to themselves. Now I’m going theoretical again. Julia doesn’t like murder, and she’s frightened, and he’s not too sure she won’t weaken on him. That’s why he makes her break with Morelli—giving Wynant’s jealousy as an excuse. He’s afraid she might confide to Morelli in a weak moment and, as the time draws near for her still closer friend, Face Peppler, to get out of prison, he gets more and more worried. He’s been safe there as long as Face stayed in, because she’s not likely to put anything dangerous in a letter that has to pass through the warden’s hands, but now … Well, he starts to plan, and then all hell breaks loose. Mimi and her children arrive and start hunting for Wynant and I come to town and am in touch with them and he thinks I’m helping them. He decides to play safe on Julia by putting her out of the way. Like it so far?”