“That’s right. All I saw was his profile going past, but don’t think I’m not sure it was Wynant.”
“I won’t. Go ahead,” I said.
“He didn’t phone again. I’d been back about an hour when the police phoned–Julia was dead. Now you must understand that I didn’t think Wynant had killed her–not for a minute. You can understand that–you still don’t think he did. So when I went over there and the police began to ask me questions about him and I could see they suspected him, I did what ninety-nine out of a hundred lawyers would’ve done for their clients–I said nothing about having seen him in that neighborhood at about the time that the murder must have been committed. I told them what I told you–about having the date with him and him not showing up–and let them understand that I had gone over to Hermann’s straight from the Plaza.”
“That’s understandable enough,” I agreed. “There was no sense in your saying anything until you had heard his side of the story.”
“Exactly and, well, the catch is I never heard his side of the story. I’d expected him to show up, phone me, something, but he didn’t–until Tuesday, when I got that letter from him from Philadelphia, and there was not a word in it about his failure to meet me Friday, nothing about–but you saw the letter. What’d you think of it?”
“You mean did it sound guilty?”
“Yes.”
“Not particularly,” I said. “It’s about what could be expected from him if he didn’t kill her–no great alarm over the police suspecting him except as it might interfere with his work, a desire to have it all cleaned up with no inconvenience to him–not too bright a letter to have come from anybody else, but in line with his particular form of goofiness. I can see him sending it off without the faintest notion that the best thing he could do would be to account for his own actions on the day of the murder. How sure are you he was coming from Julia’s when you saw him?”
“I’m sure now. I thought it likely at first. Then I thought he may have been to his shop. It’s on First Avenue, just a few blocks from where I saw him, and, though it’s been closed since he went away, we renewed the lease last month and everything’s there waiting for him to come back to it, and he could have been there that afternoon. The police couldn’t find anything there to show whether he had or hadn’t.”
“I meant to ask you: there was some talk about his having grown whiskers. Was he–”
“No–the same long bony face with the same ragged near-white mustache.”
“Another thing: there was a fellow named Nunheim killed yesterday, a small–”
“I’m coming to that,” he said.
“I was thinking about the little fellow you thought might be shadowing you.”
Macaulay stared at me. “You mean that might’ve been Nunheim?”
“I don’t know. I was wondering.”
“And I don’t know,” he said. “I never saw Nunheim, far as I–”
“He was a little fellow, not more than five feet three, and would weigh maybe a hundred and twenty. I’d say he was thirty-five or -six. Sallow, dark hair and eyes, withi the eyes set pretty close together, big mouth, long limp nose, bat-wing ears–shifty-looking.”
“That could easily be him,” he said, “though I didn’t get too close a view of my man. I suppose the police would let me see him”–he shrugged–“not that it matters now. Where was I? Oh, yes, about not being able to get in touch with Wynant. That put me in an uncomfortable position, since the police clearly thought I was in touch with him and lying about it. So did you, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” I admitted.
“And you also, like the police, probably suspected that I had met him, either at the Plaza or later, on the day of the murder.”
“It seemed possible.”
“Yes. And of course you were partly right. I had at least seen him, and seen him at a place and time that would’ve spelled Guilty with a capital G to the police, so, having lied instinctively and by inference, I now lied directly and deliberately. Herrnann had been tied up in a conference all that afternoon and didn’t know how long I had been waiting to see him. Louise Jacobs is a good friend of mine. Without going into details, I told her she could help me help a client by saying I had arrived there at a minute or two after three o’clock and she agreed readily enough. To protect her in case of trouble, I told her that if anything went wrong she could always say that she hadn’t remembered what time I arrived, but that I, the next day, had casually mentioned my arrival at that time and she had no reason for doubting me–throwing the whole thing on me.” Macaulay took a deep breath. “None of that’s important now. What’s important is that I heard from Wynant this morning.”