Wolfe waved it away. “If you can trust me with your fate I can trust you for a fee. But I can’t undertake to look two ways at once. Your wife and her sisters and Mrs. Hawthorne have engaged me in the matter of the will. They are my clients. If I take on your job too I run the risk of finding myself confronted by the painful necessity...”
Wolfe let it hang. Dunn glowered at him. The tableau was interrupted by a knock at the door, followed by its opening for the entrance of the butler.
“What is it?” Dunn demanded.
“Three gentlemen to see you, sir. Mr. Skinner, Mr. Cramer and Mr. Hombert.”
“Ask them to wait. Tell them — put them in that room with the piano. I’ll see them there.”
The butler bowed and went. June, looking across at Wolfe, said quietly, “You mean, what if one of us killed my brother.”
“Bosh!” Dunn blurted.
June shook her head at him. “Bosh to us, John, not to Mr. Wolfe.” Her eyes went to Wolfe. “If we ask you to expose a murderer, we’ll expect you to do so if you can. Do you really — do you think one of us did it?”
“I haven’t started thinking,” said Wolfe testily. “I just want things understood. I don’t like it. If Miss May Hawthorne, for instance, is going to be convicted for murder, I’d rather have nothing to do with it. I work as a detective to make money, and I expect to make some on that will business. I’d prefer to let it go at that, but my confounded vanity won’t let me. John Charles Dunn stands here and puts his fate in my hands. What the devil is a conceited man like me going to do?” He frowned at Dunn. “I warn you, sir, that if I start after this murderer I’m apt to catch him. Or her.”
“I hope you do.”
“So do I,” said June. “We all do.”
“Except one of you,” said Wolfe grimly. “At present I know nothing at all about it, but if Mr. Skinner is proceeding on the theory that Hawthorne was killed by someone in that gathering at your house, I don’t blame him. At any rate, I’ll have to start with them. Separately. Who is on the premises?”
“My sisters are,” said June. “and the children, and I think Miss Fleet...”
I chimed in, “I saw Mrs. Hawthorne downstairs, or at least someone in a veil.”
“That will do to begin with,” said Wolfe. “You, Mr. Dunn? It won’t hurt Mr. Skinner to wait a few minutes longer. I understand you were chopping wood. Miss May Hawthorne says she was asked whether she heard your axe going continuously from 4:30 to 5:30.”
“She didn’t,” Dunn said curtly. “I’m not a robot. I sat on a log. I was in a stew. I didn’t like Noel Hawthorne being there, even for our anniversary.”
“It wasn’t exactly a gay carefree party.”
“It was not.”
“Around four o’clock you and Hawthorne had discussed shooting a hawk?”
“The hawk was there, flying around, over towards the woods. Ames had told me it had got a chicken the day before, and I told Noel. He wanted to shoot it. He liked to shoot things. I don’t. I found Ames and told him to give Noel his shotgun, and Noel went off with it. I went the other way, around back of the sheds, to let off steam splitting wood.”
“Did Hawthorne himself suggest shooting the hawk? Or did you suggest it to get rid of him?”
“He suggested it.” Dunn was frowning. “See here. You’d better put me at the end of the list. I’m aware what you’re capable of, and I don’t swagger. It wouldn’t be in me to put you on this as a finesse if my own heel was exposed.”
“But it’s my job now, Mr. Dunn. Were others present when the hawk was discussed?”
“Yes, we were having tea on the lawn. Most of us.”
“Then I can ask them. Even if there were something to fish out of you, I doubt if I could do it; you’ve had long training. Do you know of anything that happened that afternoon that you think might help me? Anything at all?”
“No. Nothing is in my mind now.”
“Do you suspect anyone of murdering Hawthorne?”
“Yes, I suspect his wife. His widow.”
“Indeed.” Wolfe’s brows went up. “Any special reason?”
“That’s just leaping in the dark, John,” June remonstrated. “Poor Daisy is a spiteful wretch, but—”
“I answered his question, June dear. He asked if I suspect anyone — No special reason, Mr. Wolfe. She’s malevolent and she hated him. That’s all.”
“You didn’t smell burnt powder on her hands or anything like that.”
“No no. Nothing.”
“Well.” Wolfe turned. “What about you, Mrs. Dunn? You went to pick raspberries, didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“About what time?”
“Shortly after Noel went with the gun and my husband went to chop wood. We finished tea and scattered. Who told you I went to pick raspberries?”
“Your sister May. Wild raspberries?”
“No, we have a patch in a corner of the vegetable garden.”
“Did you hear the shots that killed crows?”
“Yes, I did. And I heard the third shot, the — the last one. Faintly, but I heard it. Of course I thought it was only my brother still trying to get the hawk, but I’m nervous about guns and I don’t like the sound no matter what is being shot. The third shot was a little before five o’clock. I quit picking raspberries and went to the arbor for some grape leaves, and when I got to the house it was ten after five.”
“I understand that Titus Ames corroborates that — the time of the third shot.”
June nodded. “He was in the barn milking.”
“Yes. There seems to have been a great variety of activity around there. Now, Mrs. Dunn, if I asked you a lot of questions would it do me any good?”
“I don’t know. I’m certainly willing to answer them.”
“Do you know of anything that would help me?”
“No. I know a great many things about my brother, his character and personality, and his relations with us and other people, but nothing that I think would help you find his murderer.”
“We’ll have to talk it over. Not now; I’ll see the others first — By the way, Mr. Dunn, I want to send a man up to your place in the country. May I have a note to Titus Ames, telling him to let my man look around, and to answer questions if he asks any? The name is Fred Durkin.”
“I’ll write it,” June offered. “And I’ll send — whom shall I send first, Mr. Wolfe?”
I put in an oar. “Your daughter, Mrs. Dunn, if you please.”
“My daughter?” She looked at me in surprise. “She wasn’t there. She didn’t arrive until afterwards.”
“We’ll take her first,” I said firmly.
She accepted it and crossed to her husband, and they left the room together, with his arm around her shoulders and her hand patting him on the back.
When the door had closed Wolfe asked, “Why the daughter?”
Rummaging through the desk drawers for something to take notes on, I told him, “By request. She’s trying to win a prize and wants to take your picture.”
Chapter 8
Sara Dunn came in on a lope, but she had to sit and wait a while until some chores were disposed of. A phone call to Saul Panzer to tell him to report to us there as soon as possible, one to Fred Durkin ditto, and one to Johnny Keems also ditto. One to Fritz to tell him we wouldn’t be home for lunch. A demand, relayed by a maid to the butler, for beer. And time out for my report to Wolfe, more in detail, on the episode of Mr. Eugene Davis. After that, Wolfe sat with his lips pushing in and out for some moments, and then leaned back, sighed, and addressed the first victim.
“You told Mr. Goodwin you wanted to see me, Miss Dunn?”
“Yes,” she said. It was astonishing how much her eyes were like her mother’s, while her mouth and chin weren’t Hawthorne at all. “I want to tell you something.”