She considered it a moment. "He came around seven o'clock."
"Did he come to see you or your husband or your daughter?"
She glared. "No."
"Whom did he come to see?"
"I don't know. We don't know."
"Try again. That's silly. I'm not going to spend all day prying it out of you bit by bit."
She eyed me. "Have you ever been up there?"
"I'm asking the questions, Mrs. Perez. Whom did he come to see?"
"We don't know." She turned. "Go, Maria."
"But Mother, it's not - "
"Go!"
Maria went, back inside, and shut the door. It was just as well, since it's a strain to keep your eyes where they ought to be when they want to be somewhere else. Mother returned to me.
"He came around seven o'clock and knocked on the door. That one." She pointed to the door Maria had shut behind her. "He spoke to my husband and paid him some money. Then he went down the hall to the elevator. We don't know if someone was up there or if someone came later. We were looking at the television, so we wouldn't hear if someone came in and went to the elevator. Anyhow we weren't supposed to know. The door in front has a good lock. So it's not silly that we don't know who he came to see."
"Where's the elevator?"
"In the back. It has a lock too."
"You asked if I have ever been up there.
Have you?"
"Of course. Everyday. We keep it clean."
"Then you have a key. We'll go up now." I moved.
She glanced at her husband, hesitated, glanced at me, went and opened the door Maria had closed and said something in Spanish, and started down the hall. Perez followed, and I brought up the rear. At the far end of the hall, clear back, she took a key from a pocket of her skirt and inserted it in the lock of a metal door, another Rabson lock. The door, either aluminum or stainless steel, slid open. That door certainly didn't fit that hall, and neither did the inside of the elevator - more stainless steel, with red enameled panels on three sides. It was small, not even as large as Wolfe's at home. It ascended, silent and smooth, I judged, right to the top floor, the door slid open, and we stepped out.
For the second time in an hour I must have either gaped or gasped when Perez turned on the lights. I have seen quite a few rooms where people had gone all out, but that topped them all. It may have been partly the contrast with the neighborhood, the outside of the house, and the down below, but it would have been remarkable no matter where. The first impression was of silk and skin. The silk, mostly red but some pale yellow, was on the walls and ceiling and couches. The skin was on the girls and women in the pictures, paintings, that took a good third of the wall space. In all directions was naked skin. The pale yellow carpet, wall to wall, was silk too, or looked it. The room was enormous, twenty-five feet wide and the full length of the house, with no windows at either end. Headed to the right wall, near the center, was a bed eight feet square with a pale yellow silk coverlet. Since yellow was Wolfe's pet color it was too bad he hadn't come along. I sniffed the air. It was fresh enough, but it smelled. Air-conditioned, with built-in perfume.
There weren't many surfaces that would hold fingerprints - the tops of two tables, a TV console, a stand with a telephone. I turned to Mrs. Perez. "Have you cleaned here since Sunday night?"
"Yes, yesterday morning."
That settled that. "Where's the door to the stairs?"
"No stairs."
"They're boarded up below," Perez said.
"The elevator's the only way to come up?"
"Yes."
"How long has it been like this?"
"Four years. Since he bought the house. We had been here two years."
"How often did he come here?"
"We don't know."
"Certainly you do, if you came up every day to clean. How often?"
"Maybe once a week, maybe more."
I turned on Perez. "Why did you kill him?"
"No." He half closed an eye. "Me? No."
"Who did?"
"We don't know," his wife said.
I ignored her. "Look," I told him, "I don't want to turn you over unless I have to. Mr. Wolfe and I would prefer to keep you to ourselves. But if you don't open up we'll have no choice, and there may not be much time. They've got a lot of fingerprints from the tarpaulin that covered his body. I know he was killed in this house. If just one of those prints matches yours, good-by. You're in. Since he was killed in this house, you know something. What?"
He said to his wife, "Felita?"
She was looking at me, her sharp black eyes into me. "You're a private detective," she said. "You told my husband that's how you make a living. So we pay you. We have some money, not much. One hundred dollars."
"What do you pay me for?"
"To be our detective."
"And detect what?"
"We'll tell you. We have the money downstairs."
"I'll earn it first. All right, I'm your detective, but I can quit any time, for instance if I decide that you or your husband killed Yeager. What do you want me to detect?"
"We want you to help us. What you said about the fingerprints. I told him he must put on gloves, but he didn't. We don't know how you know so much, but we know how it will be if you tell the police about this house. We did not kill Mr. House. Mr. Yeager. We don't know who killed him. My husband took his dead body and put it in that hole because we had to. When he came Sunday evening he told my husband to go to Mondor's at midnight and bring some things he had ordered, some caviar and roast pheasant and other things, and when my husband came up with them his dead body was here." She pointed. "There on the floor. What could we do? It was secret that he came to this house. What would happen if we called a policeman? We knew what would happen. So now we pay you to help us. Perhaps more than one hundred dollars. You will know - "
She whirled around. There had been a noise from the elevator, a click, and then a faint sound of friction, barely audible. Perez said, "It's going down. Someone down there."
"Yeah," I agreed. "Who?"
"We don't know," Mrs. Perez said.
"Then we'll see. Stay where you are, both of you." I got the Marley out.
"It's a policeman," Perez said.
"No," she said. "No key. He couldn't have Mr. House's keys because we took them."
"Shut up," I told them. "If I'm your detective, do what I say. No talking and no moving."
We stood facing the elevator. I moved to the wall and put my back to it, arm's length from the elevator door. Since it had been up when the visitor came and he had had to push the button to bring it down, he must know someone was up here and might come out with his finger on a trigger, which was where I had mine. The faint sound came again, then a click, the door opened, and out came a woman. Her back was to me as she faced Mrs. Perez.
"Thank God," she said, "it's you. I thought it would be."
"We don't know you," Mrs. Perez said.
I did. I had taken a step and got her profile. It was Meg Duncan, whom I had seen last week from a fifth-row seat on the aisle, in her star part in The Back Door to Heaven.
4
If you ever have your pick of being jumped by a man your size or a woman who only comes to your chin, I advise you to make it the man. If he's unarmed the chances are that the very worst he'll do is floor you, but God knows what the woman will do. And you may floor him first, but you can't plug a woman. Meg Duncan came at me exactly the way a cavewoman went at her man, or some other man, ten thousand years ago, her claws reaching for me and her mouth open ready to bite. There were only two alternatives, to get too far or too close, and too close is better. I rammed into her past the claws, against her, and wrapped her, and in one second the breath was all out of her. Her mouth stayed open, but for air, not to bite. I slid around and had her arms from behind. In that position the worst you can get is a kick on a shin. She was gasping. My grip may have been really hurting her right arm because I had the gun in that hand and the butt was pressing into her. When I removed that hand to drop the Marley in my pocket she didn't move, and I turned loose and backed up a step.