“Was and had,” I corrected.
“Oh. Yes. Her income was enormous. After a few months of the Village all of a sudden she was off, and do you know what her excuse was? Her maid—that was Margaret—she had to take Margaret to New Orleans to see her sick mother! Did you ever hear anything to beat it? Off she went, leaving me to close up the place in the Village. We were still friends all right; she wrote me from New Orleans raving about it, and the first thing I knew, here came a letter saying that she had found her prince and married him, and they were off for Peru, where he had an option on the Andes Mountains, or approximately that.”
Mrs Jaffee finished the coffee, put the cup and saucer down on the tray, and wriggled back until she was against the cushions. “That,” she said, “was the last letter I ever got from Pris. The very last. Maybe I still have it—I remember she enclosed a picture of him. I wondered why she didn’t write, and then one day she phoned me—she was back in New York, and she was alone, except for Margaret, and she was calling herself Miss Priscilla Eads. I saw her a few times, and when she bought a place up in Westchester I went there once, but she was a completely different person, and she didn’t invite me again, and I wouldn’t have gone if she had. For nearly three years I didn’t see her at all, until she had been to Reno and come back and joined the Salvation Army—do you know about that?”
I said yes.
“She was through with that too at the time she heard of my husband’s death and came to see me. She had decided to take up her father’s business where he had left off, only of course she wouldn’t own it until she was twenty-five. She seemed more like the old Pris, and we might have got together again, but I had just lost Dick and I was in no condition to get together with anyone, so, the way it went, I didn’t see her again until last week, and then I didn’t—”
She stopped abruptly and jerked her chin up. “For God’s sake, my not doing what she wanted—that didn’t have anything to do with her being killed, did it? Is that why you wanted to see me?”
I shook my head. “I can’t answer the first one, but it’s not why I wanted to see you. Did she get in touch with you again? A phone call or letter?”
“No.”
“Did any of the others, the Softdown people?”
“No.”
“Where were you Monday night? Not that I want an affidavit, but the police will be asking.”
“They will not!”
“Sure they will, unless they crack it before they get to you. Practice on me. Name the people you were playing Canasta with.”
“I wasn’t. I was at home. Here.”
“Any company? Or was Olga here?”
“No.”
I shrugged. “That requires no practice.” I leaned to her a little. “Look, Mrs Jaffee, I might as well admit it. I’m here under false pretenses. I said we wanted information, Mr Wolfe and I, and we do, but we also want help. Of course you know of the provisions of Priscilla’s father’s will? Now that she is dead, you know that five people—Helmar, Brucker, Quest, Pitkin, and Miss Duday—you know that they will own most of the Softdown stock?”
“Yes, certainly.” She was frowning, concentrating at me.
“Okay. You’re a stockholder. We want you to bring an action against those five people. Use your own lawyer, or we’ll recommend one. We want you to ask a court for an injunction restraining them from exercising any of the rights of ownership of that stock until it is determined whether one or more of them acquired it by the commission of a crime. We think that under the circumstances a court will entertain such a request and may grant it.”
“But what—” Her frown was deeper. “Why should I do that?”
“Because you have a legitimate interest in the proper handling of the firm’s affairs. Because you were Priscilla’s oldest friend, and formerly her closest one. Who do you think killed her?”
“I don’t know. I wish you—don’t do this!”
“This is what I came for. It may amount to nothing. The police may get it fast, today or tomorrow, and if so that settles it. But they may never get it, that has been known to happen, and a week or a month from now may be too late for Mr Wolfe to start on it, and anyhow his client won’t wait. We can’t march in as the cops can. We have to have some way of getting at those people, we have to get a foot in, and this will do it. I’ll tell you, Mrs Jaffee, I’m not going to contribute any cracks about your accepting dividend checks, but it is true that that business has been supporting you in pretty good style for a long time, and this isn’t much for it to ask in return, especially since you can be darned sure Priscilla Eads would be asking it too if she could talk. It won’t take—”
I stopped because only a sap goes on talking to someone who is walking out on him. As she left the divan and started off she said nothing, but she sure was walking out. At an arch at the far end of the room she turned and spoke. “I won’t do it! I won’t do that!”
She was gone. A moment later the sound came of a door closing—not slamming, but firmly closing. After standing and considering a little, and deciding that I was out of ammunition for that target at that time and place, I moved in the opposite direction to the one she had taken, to the entrance foyer. Crossing it, my eye caught the hat on the table and the coat on the back of the chair.
What the hell, I thought, and picked them up and took them along.
Chapter VIII
It was going on noon when, having made three stops en route, I paid off my hackie at the corner of Twenty-ninth and Lexington and walked east. The first stop had been at a drugstore to phone Wolfe and report lack of progress; the second had been at the Salvation Army depot to donate the coat and hat; and the third had been at the restaurant where, according to Lon Cohen, Andreas Fomos was employed as a waiter. Informed that Fomos was taking the day off, I had proceeded to his residence.
Not with any high expectations. My main hope had been to escort Sarah Jaffee to Thirty-fifth Street for a session with Wolfe and Nathaniel Parker, the only lawyer Wolfe has ever sent orchids to, arranging details about the injunction. Having flubbed that one, this stab at Fomos, as instructed by Wolfe, struck me as a damn poor substitute motion. So it was not with any enthusiasm for the errand, but merely as routine through long training, that as I approached the number on East Twenty-ninth Street I cased the area with a sharp and thorough eye, and, focusing on a spot across the street, recognized something. Crossing over, I entered a dingy and cluttered shoe-repair shop, and confronted a man seated there who, at my approach, had lifted a newspaper so as to hide his face from view.
I addressed the newspaper distinctly. “Get Lieutenant Rowcliff. I think I’m going to impersonate an officer of the law. I feel it coming.”
The newspaper came down, disclosing the plump features, not quite puffy yet, of a city employee named Halloran. “You got good eyes,” he said, just stating a fact. “If you mean disrespect for the lieutenant you mentioned, go right ahead.”
“Some other time. Right now I’m working. I was glad to see you because I may be walking into a trap. If I don’t come out in three days, phone Rowcliff. Is this a really serious tail, or are you on him alone?”
“I came in here for a pair of shoestrings.”
I apologized for interrupting, left him, and headed across the street. Apparently Homicide had by no means wrapped it up, since they thought it necessary to keep an eye on Fomos, who, so far as I knew from what I had read in the papers, was involved only in that he had been bereaved; but surely Fomos wasn’t really hot or I would have got a very different reaction from Halloran.
It was a five-story old red brick building. In the row of names under the mailboxes at the right of the vestibule, Fomos was next to the end. I pressed the button, waited half a minute for the click to come, pushed the door open, entered, and made for the stairs. There were three doors on each landing, one at each end and one in the middle. Three flights up, the one at the far end was sporting a big rosette of black ribbon with streamers hanging nearly to the floor. I went to it and pressed the button, and in a moment a gruff deep voice came at me through the wood. “Who is it?”