Haft had removed the cheaters and was fingering the bows. You said you had a proposal.
Yes. I can save you gentlemen severe annoyance by not telling the police what I know. In return you will answer some questions. Many questions. You may refuse to answer any specific one, but a refusal is often more informative than a reply. The point is, all of you will remain until I have finished. It may take hours. I don’t expect to get all that is in your minds and memories regarding Carol Mardus, but I’ll get all I can.
You would probably get more, Krug said, if you took us separately.
Wolfe shook his head. This is better. What one omits another may supply. And it’s safer, since it must be all or none. If one of you would rather answer to the police than to me, I withdraw the proposal. You, Mr. Krug?
I’ll answer to the police anyway. I’m Carol’s divorced husband. Of course the list and the picture would make it worse. And if you’re as good as your reputation… I’ll take you. I’ll answer your questions.
Mr. Bingham?
I’m in. I may answer your questions.
Mr. Haft?
He had the cheaters back on. It seems to me all one-sided. You can tell the police about the lists and the pictures whenever you please.
True. You risk that. I know I won’t, if all of you accept my proposal, but you don’t. Your choice is between a certainty and a possibility.
Very well. I accept the proposal.
Wolfe swiveled to look up at the clock. Ten minutes to three. Good-by schedule. He couldn’t possibly make it. He swiveled back. It will take a while, he said. Will you have something to drink?
They all would, and Wolfe rang for Fritz. Scotch and soda for Haft, bourbon and water for Krug, brandy with water on the side for Bingham, milk for me, and beer for Wolfe. He leaned back and closed his eyes. Haft got up and crossed over to the bookshelves and looked at titles. Bingham asked to use the phone and then decided not to. Krug sat fidgeting, staring here and then there, lacing and unlacing his fingers. When his bourbon and water came he took some, had trouble with the swallowing, and nearly coughed it out. Wolfe opened the bottle of beer, dropped the cap in the drawer they always go there so he can keep count poured, watched the foam go down to an inch, and drank.
He licked his lips and focused on the divorced husband. I have a suggestion, Mr. Krug. Tell me about Carol Mardus your association with her, her association with others, anything that you think might be material. I’ll interrupt with questions only if I must.
Willis Krug took his time. He looked at Haft, not merely a glance, then at Bingham, and then at his glass, which was resting on his leg and had the fingers of both his hands curled around it. When he spoke his eyes stayed on the glass.
There are people, he said, quite a few people, who could probably tell you as much about Carol and me as I can. Maybe more for her part of it. We were married for exactly fourteen months. I wouldn’t go through that again for… He raised his eyes to Wolfe. You know I was Dick Valdon’s agent.
Wolfe nodded.
Carol sent him to me. I had never met her or heard of her. She was a reader on Distaff, and she had persuaded Manny Upton to take three of Dick’s stories, and she thought he should have an agent and sent him to me, and I met her through Dick, and we were married about a year later. I knew she and Dick had been together. Everybody did. She had been with Manny Upton too. Everybody knew that too. I’m not speaking ill of the dead. She wouldn’t think I was speaking ill of her if she were sitting here. She married me because she had been made fiction editor of Distaff, an important job, and she wanted well, I’ll use her words. She said she wanted to go tame. She was good with words. She could have made it as a writer.
He took some bourbon and water and was careful with the swallowing. I thought she stayed tame for three or four months, but I didn’t really know. I soon realized that with her, you would never really know. I’m not going to name names because that was more than five years ago, and it wouldn’t mean anything about the time you’re interested in. I don’t mean I’m not interested. I am. There was a time when I might have strangled her myself if I if I had that in me. But that was long ago. You say you want to get the murderer all right, I want you to. Of course I do. One thing hard for me to believe, that she had a baby. The way you tell it, she must have. She had an abortion while she was married to me. If she had a baby, Dick Valdon must have been the father, I’m sure of that. No other man ever meant to her what Dick did. God knows I didn’t. Are you sure about the baby? That she went to Florida and had a baby?
Yes.
Then Dick Valdon was the father.
Wolfe grunted. I’m obliged to you, sir, on behalf of my client. Naturally the father’s identity is of interest to her. Go on.
That’s all.
Surely not. When was the divorce?
Nineteen-fifty-seven.
And since then? Particularly the past sixteen months?
I can’t help you on that. In the past two years I haven’t seen Carol more than five or six times, at parties and so on. I’ve had some correspondence with her, and I’ve spoken with her on the phone fairly often, but only on business manuscripts I sent her or wanted to send her. Of course I’ve heard talk about her. There are people who will say to a man, I understand your ex-wife is having a time with so-and-so.’ That doesn’t mean anything. Nothing those people say means anything.
You’re wrong, Mr. Krug. Every word uttered since man first invented words is a part of the record, though unrecorded. I grant that tattle is often vacuous. A question. If your association with your former wife has been only casual since the divorce, why did you omit her name from the list you gave me, and why did you not identify her picture?
Krug nodded. Of course. Pause. Frankly, I don’t know.
Nonsense.
It may be nonsense, but I don’t know. Not putting her name on the list, that’s easy to understand. He stopped. A long pause. No, I won’t dodge it. It doesn’t matter how I justified it consciously. We can’t control our subconscious mind, but sometimes we know what it’s up to. Subconsciously I refused to accept the possibility that Carol had sent anonymous letters to Lucy Valdon, so I didn’t put her on the list and I tore the picture up. That’s the best I can do, either for you or for the police.
The police should never ask you. They will of course ask you this, so I might as well: did you kill Carol Mardus?
Oh, for God’s sake. No.
When and how did you learn of her death?
I was in the country for the weekend. I have a little place at Pound Ridge. Manny Upton phoned while I was having a late breakfast; the police had notified him and asked him to identify the body. Carol had no relatives in New York. I drove to town and went to my office, and I had only been there a few minutes when Leo Bingham phoned and asked me to come here.
You spent the night in the country?
Yes.
The police will want particulars, since you are the divorced husband, but I’ll leave that to them. One more question, a hypothetical one. If Carol Mardus had a baby by Richard Valdon, conceived in April of last year and born last January, four months after Valdon’s death; and if X knew about it, helped her dispose of it, and later, moved by pique or jealousy or spite, took it and left it in Mrs. Valdon’s vestibule, who is X? Of the men in Carol Mardus’s orbit, which one fits the specifications? I don’t ask you to accuse, merely to suggest.
I can’t, Krug said. I told you, I know nothing about her for the past two years.
Wolfe poured beer, emptying the bottle, waited until the foam was at the right level to bead his lips, drank, removed the beads with his tongue, put the glass down, and swiveled to face the red leather chair. You heard the hypothetical question, Mr. Bingham. Have you a suggestion?
I wasn’t listening, Bingham said. I’m thinking about you. I’m getting tight on your brandy. I’m deciding whether to believe you or not, about how you got that picture. You’re a very smooth article.