“Hold it, Junior,” I told him. “I don’t want to bust a knuckle on you, but I think it’s time for your nap. Sit down and stay sat, or else.” Keeping a corner of an eye on him, I asked Wolfe, “Do you want to let him recite?”
“Not now. We’ll see later. Go on, Miss Duday.”
She waited for Fomos to return to his chair, then resumed. “My call on Margaret Fomos and my talk with her had no significance whatever other than what I have said. I was talking about motive. Should I deal further with that?”
“Whatever you think might help.”
“It will be difficult without giving a false impression, but I’ll try. I don’t want to give the impression that I think it probable that one of my business associates is a murderer, but facts are facts. Although Priscilla was not fond of me personally, she had great confidence in my intelligence and ability. Also she thought that women should have more positions of power in all fields. And in addition, when she decided some eighteen months ago to take an interest in the affairs of Softdown and learn the ropes, she resented it that the men—and especially the four men present here—treated her with what she regarded as servility but did not conceal—”
Two of them made noises. She halted. Wolfe darted a glance at them. They subsided.
“But did not conceal their doubt of her ability to understand the mysterious process of making and selling towels. If I shared their doubt at all I had brains enough not to show it, and Priscilla appreciated that. More and more she came to me, and only to me, for her lessons and experience. The result was that I had reason to expect great personal advantage from her approaching assumption of ownership and active control. As for what these men had to expect, they can tell you that.”
She twisted her lips, considering. “I might add this. In nineteen forty-one when Mr Eads was alive and I was assistant to the president, my salary was forty thousand dollars. Last year, nineteen fifty-one, with Mr Helmar in control as trustee, it was eighteen thousand. Priscilla told me that my beginning salary as president would be fifty thousand. Mr Brucker’s is sixty-five.”
Wolfe grunted, a little peevishly I thought, possibly at the news that a mere towel merchant was making half as much as him. He asked, “Did these gentlemen know that Miss Eads intended to put you in charge?”
“I’d rather let them answer that. Except—if they say no, may I speak to it?”
“Yes. Go on, Miss Duday.”
“Well—as for opportunity, I understand that the theory is that the same person killed both of them, and that Margaret Fomos was killed after half-past ten, and Priscilla was killed before two o’clock. During those three and a half hours I—”
“If you please,” Wolfe cut in. “We won’t spend time on that.”
“No?” Her brows went up.
“No. If one of you has an invulnerable alibi and it has been checked by the police, he can afford to tell me to go to the devil and will surely do so. Moreover, an alibi would convince me of nothing. Consider the crimes. Mrs Fomos was waylaid on a street at night, dragged or propelled into a vestibule, strangled, and her bag taken. In the bag were keys. Using one of them, the murderer gained access to the apartment of Miss Eads, lay in ambush, and upon her entry struck her and strangled her. Looking at you, Miss Duday, I would think it highly doubtful that you committed those crimes as described, but there is no reason why you shouldn’t have contrived them. What would you have to pay? Ten thousand? Twenty? No, I’ll leave your alibi or lack of one to the police.”
He frowned at her. “As you see, we’re severely circumscribed. Motive requires no scrutiny; it blares and brandishes. Means is no problem—a piece of cord two feet long. Opportunity offers no path to a conclusion, since the murders may well have been vicarious, with enough at stake to make them worth planning and paying for. How can I harass you or devise a trap? The best I can do is induce you to talk, and hope for something. How are Mr Helmar and Mr Brucker getting along with Miss O’Neil?”
That started a minor commotion. Brucker, who had been letting himself sprawl some, jerked up straight. Pitkin emitted a sound that seemed to be the start of a giggle, but he stopped it. Helmar’s jaw fell and then closed and clamped.
Miss Duday kept her composure. “I really don’t know,” she said. “Of course this has changed the situation—temporarily, at least.”
“You told Mr Goodwin that as soon as Miss Eads was in control Miss O’Neil would lose her job.”
“Did I? Well, now she won’t.”
“You also told Mr Goodwin that she was playing Mr Helmar and Mr Brucker against each other. What was the connection between that fact and the murder of Miss Eads?”
“None that I know of.”
“No, that won’t do.” Wolfe was crisp. “Mr Goodwin said he was there to investigate the murder, and you volunteered that information. You are much too intelligent to blatter irrelevancies. What was the connection?”
She smiled, a thin tight smile. “Goodness, am I cornered? Do you suppose in some dark crevice of my mind there was the thought that I wouldn’t dream of thinking either of those men capable of murdering for profit, but in their blind passion for that creature—there was no telling? And I blurted it out to Mr Goodwin that day? Am I like that?”
“I couldn’t say.” Wolfe skipped it. “When and where did you last see Miss Eads?”
“One week ago today. Last Thursday afternoon, at the office.”
“What office?”
“The Softdown office at One ninety-two Collins Street.”
“What happened, and what was said? Tell me about it.”
Viola Duday hesitated. She opened her mouth, closed it again, and hesitated some more. Finally she spoke. “This is a detail,” she said, “where we acted like idiots—these four men and I. We had a discussion Tuesday afternoon—it was interrupted by your man, Mr Goodwin, and we agreed on the account we would give of what had happened on Thursday. We knew that would come up in the investigation of the murder, and we agreed on what to say. It was the only time in my life, I have ever been a complete fool. Miss O’Neil was present, because she had been concerned in the events of Thursday. Since she is totally brainless, it didn’t take a competent policeman more than ten minutes alone with her to tangle her up. In the end, naturally, they learned exactly what had happened Thursday, so I might as well tell you. Do you want it in full?”
“Full enough. I can always stop you.”
“Priscilla came downtown and had lunch with me. She said that she had talked with Sarah Jaffee the day before, and Sarah had refused to be elected a director, that she wouldn’t even come to a stockholders’ meeting on July first as we had planned. Priscilla and I discussed getting someone else for a fifth director, and other things. After lunch she went back to the office with me. It had got so it was always tense around that place when Priscilla was there, and that day it was worse than usual. I wasn’t in the room when the scene between Priscilla and Miss O’Neil started, so I don’t know how it began, but I heard the last of it. Priscilla told her to leave the building and not come back, and she refused to go. That had happened once before.”
“On the former occasion,” Mr Brucker put in, “Miss Eads had been completely in the wrong.”
Viola Duday ignored him. She didn’t even spend a glance on him, but kept at Wolfe. “Priscilla was furious. She phoned Helmar at his law office and asked him to come, and when he arrived she told him and Brucker that she had decided to have a new board of directors and put me in as president. They called in Quest and Pitkin, and the four of them spent three hours trying to persuade her that I was incompetent and would ruin the business. I don’t think they succeeded. I know that when she left she came to my room and said it would be only eleven more days, and that she was going away for the weekend, and she shook hands. That was the last time I saw her.”
“As far as you knew, it was still her intention to make you president?”
“Yes. I’m sure it was.”
“Do you know that she came here Monday afternoon and spent some hours in this house?”
“Yes, I know.”
“Do you know what she came for?”
“I know nothing definite. I have heard conjectures.”
“I won’t ask you from whom or what. I am aware, Miss Duday, that in coming here this evening you people were impelled only partly by the threat of a legal action by Mrs Jaffee. You also hoped to learn what Miss Eads came to see me for and what she said. I’m afraid I’ll have to disappoint you. I have given a complete report to the police, or Mr Goodwin has, and if they don’t care to publish it neither do I. But I will ask you, do you know of any reason why, on Monday, Miss Eads should have decided to seek seclusion? Was she being harassed or frightened by anyone?”