I was gawking at him. It was hard to believe. It is not unheard of for a Wall Street lawyer to find relaxation in the companionship of a well-made female grabber, but when you hear one with his mind still working blathering like that about it, you wonder. Such a man is a menace to healthy and normal dealings between the sexes. After hearing Helmar emit that blah about a specimen like Daphne O’Neil, for weeks I got suspicious whenever I heard myself addressing a young woman in anything more sociable than a defiant snarl.
Wolfe said, “I take it you’re through, Mr Helmar?”
“I am.”
Wolfe turned. “Mr Brucker?”
Brucker was the one I favored. It will sometimes happen, when a group of people are under the blazing light of a murder job, that they all look alike to you, but not often. Usually, sometimes for a reason you can name and sometimes not, you have a favorite, and mine in this case was Jay L. Brucker, the president. I didn’t know why, but it could have been his long pale face and long thin nose, which reminded me of a bird I had once worked for during summer vacation in Ohio in my high school days, who had diddled me out of forty cents; or again it could have been the way he had looked at Daphne O’Neil, Tuesday afternoon in the Softdown conference room. There is no law against a man showing his admiration for works of nature, but it had been only a few hours since he had heard of the death of Priscilla Eads, and it wouldn’t have hurt him any to wait till sundown to start gloating.
He wasn’t gloating now. He was the only one who had had three drinks—a good shot of rye each time, with a splash of water—and I had noticed that when he conveyed the glass to his lips his hand trembled.
“I would like to tell—” he started. It didn’t come through well, and he cleared his throat twice and started over. “I would like to tell you, Mr Wolfe, that I regard this action by Mrs Jaffee as completely justified. My opinion was that the stock should be placed in escrow until the matter of Miss Eads’ death has been satisfactorily cleared up, but the others objected that sometimes a murder is not solved for months or even years, and sometimes never. I had to admit that their position had some validity, but so has Mrs Jaffee’s, and it should be possible to arrive at a compromise. I do not resent the interest you are taking in the matter. I would welcome and appreciate your assistance in arranging a compromise.”
Wolfe shook his head. “You’re wasting time, sir. I’m an investigator, not a negotiator. I’m after a murderer. Is it you? I don’t know, but you do. I ask you to speak to that.”
“I would be glad to”—he cleared his throat again—“if I thought I knew anything that would help you to arrive at the truth. I’m just a plodding, hard-working businessman, Mr Wolfe; there’s nothing brilliant or spectacular about me the way there is about you. I remember a day back in nineteen thirty-two, the worst year for American business in this century. I was an awkward young fellow, had been with Softdown just three years, had started there when I finished college. It was a cold December day, a couple of weeks before Christmas, and I was in a gloomy frame of mind. Word had got around that on account of business conditions further retrenchment had been decided on, and at the end of the year several of us in my section would be dropped.”
“If you think this is pertinent,” Wolfe muttered.
“I do, yes, sir. On that cold December day Mrs Eads had come to the office to see Mr Eads about something, and had brought with her Priscilla, their little five-year-old daughter, a lovely little girl. Priscilla remained out on the floor while her mother went into her father’s office, walking around looking at people and things, as children will; and I happened to be there, and she came up to me and asked what my name was, and I told her, Jay. Do you know what she said?”
He waited for a reply, and Wolfe, coerced, said, “No.”
“She said ‘Jay? You don’t look like a bluejay!’ She was simply irresistible. I had been busy that morning with some tests of a new yarn we were considering, and I had a little of it in my pocket, just a few short strands of bright green, and I took it and tied it loosely around her neck and told her that was a beautiful necklace I was giving her for Christmas, and I took her to a minor on the wall and held her up so she could look at it.”
He had to clear his throat some more. “She was delighted, clapping her hands and making little childish cries of glee, and then her mother came, coming to get her, and with her was the husband and father, Mr Nathan Eads. And little Priscilla ran to him, to her father, displaying her beautiful green necklace, and do you know what she said to him?”
“No.”
“She said, ‘Daddy, look what Jay gave me! Oh, Daddy, you can’t make Jay go with the others! Daddy, you must keep Jay!’ And I was kept! I was the youngest man in my section, and some of my seniors had to go, but I was kept! That, Mr Wolfe, was the first time I ever saw Priscilla Eads. You can imagine how I felt about her. You can imagine how I have felt about her ever since, through all the years, in spite of all the difficulties and frictions and disagreements. That green necklace, just a scrap of yarn, I put around her little neck! I have of course told this to the police, and they have verified it. You can imagine how I feel now, knowing that I am actually suspected of being capable of killing Priscilla Eads.” He extended his hands, and they fluttered. “With these hands! These hands that tied that necklace on her twenty years ago!”
He got up and went to the refreshment table and used the hands, one to hold a glass and the other to pour rye and splash in a little water. Returning to his chair, he gulped half of it down.
“Well, sir?” Wolfe prodded him.
“I have no more to say,” he declared.
“You’re not serious.” Wolfe was flabbergasted.
“Oh, yes, he is.” Viola Duday was grimly gratified. “For three years he has written most of the copy for Softdown advertising—but I don’t suppose you read advertisements.”
“Not ardently.” Wolfe eyed Brucker. “Manifestly, sir, either your mental processes are badly constipated or you think mine are. Let’s jump twenty years to day before yesterday. Tuesday afternoon you told Mr Goodwin that you five people—Mr Helmar was not present, but Miss O’Neil was—had been discussing the murder and had entertained the notion that Miss Eads had been killed by her former husband, Mr Hagh. You mentioned—”
“Who said that?” Eric Hagh was reacting. He passed between Pitkin and Miss Duday to confront them, and his blue eyes swept the arc as he repeated his challenge. “Who said that?”
Wolfe told him to sit down and was ignored. I got up and headed for him, as Irby, his lawyer, called something to him. I suppose I was more on edge than I realized, with the long session dragging out and obviously getting nowhere, and it must have shown on my face that I was ready to plug someone and why not Eric Hagh, for Wolfe called my name sharply.
“Archie!”
It brought me to. I stopped short of Hagh and told him, “Back up. You were to take part only if and when invited.”
“I’ve been accused of murder!”
“Why not? So has everyone else. If you don’t like it here, go back where you came from. Sit down and listen and start cooking up a defense.”
Irby was there with a hand on his arm, and the big handsome chiseling ex-husband let himself be urged back to his seat in the rear.
Wolfe resumed to Brucker: “Regarding Mr Hagh, you said that he wouldn’t even have had to come to New York, that he could have hired someone to kill his former wife. What was the significance of your suggestion that the deed had been done by a hired assassin?”
“I don’t know.” Brucker was frowning. “Was it significant?”
“I think it may have been. In any case, I am impressed by your enterprise in hustling off to Venezuela for a candidate when there was no lack of eligibles near at hand. But the question arises, what was in it for Mr Hagh? Why did he want her dead?”
“I don’t know.”
“Someone would have to know. Miss Duday offered the singular suggestion, to Mr Goodwin, that Miss Eads had denied she had signed the document, or Mr Hagh thought she was going to, and so he had to destroy her. That is doubly puerile. First, she had acknowledged that she had signed the document. Second, she had offered, through Mr Irby, to pay one hundred thousand dollars in settlement of the claim—just last week. Whereupon Mr Hagh, in a fit of pique, dashes to the airport for a plane to New York, flies here and kills her, after first killing her maid to get a key, and flies back again. Does that sound credible?”