Cecily fluttered a hand. “It couldn’t be simply ignored, because my brother had let it become known and gossiped about by the employees. My husband didn’t dare to keep it from the executives, and when most of them were in favor of hiring an investigator he didn’t dare oppose it. I think that was extremely clever of my brother; I had never thought he was as intelligent as that. Wasn’t that really clever?” “Very,” Wolfe agreed. “It got him killed.” “But he didn’t know that,” she protested. “It was clever to think of that way to bring pressure on my husband. I was determined, of course, to stop it, and I still think I would have succeeded if you had done what I asked-if you had stopped the investigation. It only stimulated my brother to go on. If you had quit I still think I could have persuaded my brother to give it up. But then he told Archie that he knew who had killed Waldo, and he saw he had gone too far, because what he wanted wasn’t to have my husband arrested for murder but to get his job. If Archie hadn’t been there he certainly wouldn’t have told him that, and he wouldn’t have told anybody that. I saw him that day and made him understand what he was doing, and he denied he had said it. But it may have been too late. My husband thought it was. He knew then that my brother had the letters he had received from Miss Livsey, and he thought it had gone so far that my brother couldn’t draw back even if he wanted to, and anyway he didn’t trust my brother and didn’t think he wanted to. So-that night-” She turned her palms up and lifted her shoulders.
“Yes,” Wolfe agreed, “that night. When your husband was not home in bed, and when you learned that your brother had been killed, there was only one assumption for you. How did he do it? Where was your brother killed and with what?” “I don’t know.” “Nonsense. Certainly you know. Your husband told you everything.” Wolfe wiggled a finger at her. “Come, madam. You know what this is for.” “Does it matter?” “Not to you. To you nothing matters. But I’m going to earn my fee, and you know what the alternative is.” “My brother and my husband were much alike in one way,” Cecily said. “They were both excessively conceited. When my brother met him that evening, to talk things over, and rode in his car with him, I doubt if he was at all alarmed even when my husband stopped the car in a secluded street. He was too conceited. He thought he could take care of himself. Probably he never thought otherwise, for when my husband reached over the back of the seat to the tonneau to get his brief case, what he really got was a chunk of petrified wood he had put there, and my brother was stunned by the first blow, or possibly killed-my husband wasn’t sure, but he made sure.” Cecily’s hand fluttered. “Of course,” she conceded, “something had to be done, since it was my husband’s own car, but only a supremely confident and conceited man would have proceeded as he did. He actually kept the piece of petrified wood and later brought it home and cleaned it and put it back on the desk in his study. Just ahead of my husband’s car where he had stopped it at the curb another car was parked-it was the one he had stolen and put there. He transferred the body to it. His reason for driving to Thirty-ninth Street and repeating, exactly repeating, his performance with Waldo’s body last December, every detail of it-his reason was that it would be supposed that the same person had killed both of them, and that would be to his advantage because he wouldn’t be suspected of killing Waldo. That was the reason he gave me, but it was nothing but a reason. He really did it because he had to do something with the body, and he was confident and conceited, and it was a difficult and complicated gesture of assurance and contempt-for you and me and everyone else.” Cecily turned her head. “Except you, Miss Livsey. As far as I know you are the one person toward whom it was impossible for my husband to feel contemptuous. It made me quite curious about you.” Hester had nothing to say.
Wolfe grunted, “About Miss Livsey, by the way, there is a detail. For over an hour, earlier that Friday evening, your brother walked the streets with her, talking. What were they talking about?” Cecily looked surprised. “I have no idea.” She twisted around. “What was it, Miss Livsey?” Hester was silent.
Wolfe tried it. He opened his eyes at her. “Surely you’re not going to stick to that lie now? If you do, I warn you I’ll resent it. This will be left with either my witness a liar or you, and I don’t intend it to be him. What were you discussing with Mr. Naylor?” Hester spoke, to Wolfe, emphatically not to Cecily. “He wanted to see me. He asked me to meet him.” “What did he want?” “He thought I had letters that Mr. Pine had written me, and he wanted them.” “Did you give them to him?” “I didn’t have them. I had destroyed them.” Hester swallowed. “He didn’t believe me. He had asked for them before, and he threatened to dismiss me-from my job -if I didn’t give them to him.” “Good God!” I blurted. I couldn’t help it. “Why didn’t you say so long ago?” She was on speaking terms with me too, for her eyes came my way. “How could I?
And have it all come out-about Mr. Pine?” “Does Hoff know all this?” “No. He just knows I need help.” “Did you know Pine had killed Moore? And Naylor?” “No, I-I didn’t really know anything. How could I? What I thought-what does that matter?” Wolfe wasn’t interested. He took over, asking Cecily, “What about the letters your husband got from Miss Livsey? Your brother had them. They weren’t found among his papers. Where are they?” “They were destroyed too,” she said. “My husband destroyed them. He got them- that Friday evening.” She was frowning. “But isn’t that enough? I have trusted you further than I have ever trusted any man. I admit I had to. What assurance have I that it won’t go to the police?” I gawked at her. Was she, in addition to everything else, a ninny?
“None at all,” Wolfe said. “You have done what you could to straighten it out, but there is the matter of your husband to be taken care of. Surely you can’t expect-” The phone rang. I transferred my notebook to my right hand and picked up the receiver.
“Nero Wolfe’s office, Archie Goodwin speaking.” “Archie, get this!” It was Bill Gore’s voice.
“Okay, give it to me.” He did so. It was a straight factual report of an event. I listened, asked a question or two, hung up, and turned to tell Wolfe.
“News from Bill Gore. Mr. Jasper Pine fell from a window of his office on the thirty-sixth floor. Bill has seen him, and from his description I would say that he is in worse shape than if a car had run over him. Dead on arrival.” A little gasp had come from Hester’s corner. Cecily made no sound and no move.
Wolfe heaved a sigh. He spoke to Cecily.
“You didn’t spend all your time dressing, did you, Mrs. Pine? A telephone call was enough, was it? Naturally I am not surprised. I was quite aware that you would have been much more discreet with me otherwise.” No, it wasn’t a ninny that she was. Protect your woman? Not that one. She didn’t need it.
CHAPTER Thirty-Five
Four days and nights had brought us to another Saturday. There had been, on Wednesday, a long session with Cramer. He had left, after two hours in the red leather chair, with as little love for us as when he arrived. He could beef, and did, but that was all, for he had no peg on which to hang anything. He would have dearly loved to see a headline in the Gazetee, POLICE SOLVE TWO MURDERS, but he never did.