“On Monday?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t know.” She bit her lip, regarding him. “Having no knowledge of it, I could only offer a guess.”
“Try a guess.”
“Well, I know that Perry Helmar had an appointment with her at her apartment for Monday evening. I learned that only yesterday. I know that these men were desperate, and they spent hours Monday at the Softdown office going through records for years back and compiling memoranda. I thought then that they were probably collecting evidence to prove my incompetence and demonstrate it to Priscilla, and I now think that Helmar made that appointment with her Monday, insisted on it, in order to show her that evidence and convince her that I could not be trusted. My guess is that if she decided to seek seclusion it was because they were pestering her, especially Helmar, and she had had enough of them.”
“Why especially Helmar?”
“Because he had more at stake. The others all help to run the business and could expect to continue to get good salaries after Priscilla took over. Helmar has had very little to do with the business operations, and is not an officer of the corporation, but he has been drawing forty thousand a year as counsel. He has actually earned perhaps one-tenth of it, if anything. After June thirtieth I doubt if he would have drawn anything at all, and—”
“That’s false, and you know it,” Helmar challenged her. “That’s utterly unfounded!”
“You’ll have your turn,” Wolfe told him.
“He can have it now.” Miss Duday was contemptuous. “That’s all I have to say—unless you have questions?”
“No. Well, Mr Helmar? Go ahead.”
There was a polite interruption from Eric Hagh. He wanted a refill for his glass, and others were ready too, so there was a short recess. Hagh seemed to have got the impression that we were counting on him to keep Sarah Jaffee company, and I was too busy to resent it, but apparently Nat Parker wasn’t.
Wolfe poured beer from his third bottle, swallowed some, and prompted Helmar. “Yes, sir?”
Chapter XI
From his manner and expression it was apparent that it was hard for Perry Helmar to believe that he was in such a fix. For him, a senior member of an old and respected Wall Street law firm, to have to sit conspicuously in that red leather chair and undertake to persuade a private detective named Nero Wolfe that he was not a murderer was insufferable, but he had to suffer it. His oratorical baritone was raspy and supercilious under the strain.
“You say you are not interested,” he told Wolfe, “in the factors of means and opportunity. The motive is palpable for all of us, but it is also palpable that Miss Duday is biased by animus. She cannot support her statement that after June thirtieth my income from the corporation would have ceased. I deny that Miss Eads intended to take any action so ill advised and irresponsible.”
He took a paper from his pocket and unfolded it. “As you know, when I went to Miss Eads’ apartment Monday evening to keep an appointment with her, I found a note she had left for me. The police have the original. This is a copy. It reads:
“Dear Perry:
I hope you won’t be too mad at me for standing you up. I’m not going to do anything loony. I just want to be sure where I stand. I doubt if you will hear from me before June 30th, but you will then all right. Please, and I mean this, please don’t try to find me.
Love, Pris.”
He folded the paper and returned it to his pocket. “In my opinion, the tone and substance of that communication do not indicate that Miss Eads had decided to repay my many years of safeguarding and advancing her interests in the manner described by Miss Duday. She was neither an ingrate nor a fool. I decline to offer justification of the amount paid to me by the corporation as counsel, but will say only that it was for services rendered. The business is by no means confined solely to making and selling towels, as Miss Duday sneeringly implied. Its varied activities and wide interests require constant and able supervision.”
He sent a cold, straight glance at Viola Duday and went back to Wolfe. “However, even if Miss Eads had decided to act as Miss Duday suggests, I would certainly not have been desperate. My income from my law practice, exclusive of the payments from Softdown, is adequate for my needs. And even if I had been desperate I would not have resorted to murder. The idea that a man of my training and temperament would, to gain any conceivable objective, perform so vicious a deed and incur so tremendous a risk is repugnant to every reputable theory of human conduct. That’s all.”
He clamped his jaw.
“Not quite,” Wolfe objected. “You leave too much untouched. If there was no question of desperation, if you had no thought that you were about to be squeezed out, why did you offer me five thousand dollars to find Miss Eads within six days, and double that to produce her, as you put it, alive and well?”
“I told you why. I thought it likely that she had gone, or was going, to Venezuela to see her former husband, and I wanted, if possible, to stop her before she reached him. I had had that letter from him, claiming a half-interest in her property, and she was greatly disturbed over it, and I was afraid she might do something foolish. My using that hackneyed phrase, ‘alive and well’ had no significance. I told you that the first thing to do would be to check all airplane passengers to Venezuela.” He pointed a straight, stern, bony finger. “And you had her here, in this house, and kept it from me. And after I left, you sent her to her death!”
Wolfe, no doubt aware that the finger wasn’t loaded, did not counter. He asked, “Then you’re conceding that the document Mr Hagh was waving around is authentic? That his wife signed it?”
“No.”
“But she surely knew whether she had signed it or not. If she hadn’t, if it was a fake, why would she go flying off to Venezuela?”
“She was—wild sometimes.”
Wolfe shook his head. “You can’t have it both ways, Mr Helmar. Let’s get it straight. You had shown Miss Eads the letter from Mr Hagh and the photostat of the document. What did she say? Did she acknowledge she had signed it, or deny it?”
Helmar took his time replying. Finally he said, “I’ll reserve my answer to that.”
“I doubt if aging will help it,” Wolfe said dryly. “Now that you know that Miss Eads had not gone to Venezuela, and I assure you she had no intention of going, how do you explain her backing out from her appointment with you, her departure, her asking you not to try to find her?”
“I don’t have to explain it.”
“Do you decline to try?”
“I don’t see that it needs more explanation than you already have. She knew that I was coming that evening with documentary proof that Miss Duday was utterly incompetent to direct the affairs of the corporation. I told her so that morning on the phone. I think it likely that she was already aware that she would have to abandon her idea of putting Miss Duday in control, and she didn’t want to face me and admit it. Also she knew that Miss Duday would not give her a moment’s peace for the week that was left.”
“What a monstrous liar you are, Perry,” Viola Duday said in her clear, pleasant voice.
He looked at her. That was the first time I had seen him give her a direct and explicit look, and, since she was just off the line from him to me, I had a good view of it. It demolished one detail of his exposition—the claim that a man of his training and temperament couldn’t possibly commit a murder. His look at her was perfect for a guy about to put a cord around a neck and pull tight. It was just one swift, ugly flash, and then he returned to Wolfe.
“I should think,” he said, “that would explain her leaving and her note to me. Whether it also explains what she said to you I can’t say, because I don’t know what that was.”
“What about Miss O’Neil?”
“I have nothing to say about Miss O’Neil.”
“Oh, come. She may be a mere voluptuous irrelevance, but I need to know. What was her manner of play? Was she intimate with both Mr Brucker and you, or neither? What was she after—diversion, treasure, or a man?”
Helmar’s jaw worked. It jutted anyway, and when he gave it muscle it was as outstanding as the beak of a bulldozer. He spoke. “It was stupid to submit to this at all. With the police it’s unavoidable, there’s no help for it, but with you it’s absurd—your ignorant and malicious insinuations about a young woman whom you are not fit to touch. In her innocence and modest merit she is so far above all this depravity—no! I was a fool to come!” He set the jaw for good.