Mimi turned to Macaulay and said: “You son of a bitch.”
Guild gaped at her, more surprised by that than by anything else that had been said.
Macaulay started to move. I did not wait to see what he meant to do, but slammed his chin with my left fist. The punch was all right, it landed solidly and dropped him, but I felt a burning sensation on my left side and knew I had torn the bullet-wound open.
“What do you want me to do?” I growled at Guild. “Put him in Cellophane for you?”
31
It was nearly three in the morning when I let myself into our apartment at the Normandie. Nora, Dorothy, and Larry Crowley were in the living-room, Nora and Larry playing backgammon, Dorothy reading a newspaper.
“Did Macaulay really kihi them?” Nora asked immediately.
“Yes. Did the morning papers have anything about Wynant?”
Dorothy said: “No, just about Macaulay being arrested. Why?”
“Macaulay killed him too.”
Nora said, “Really?” Larry said, “I’ll be damned.” Dorothy began to cry. Nora looked at Dorothy in surprise.
Dorothy sobbed: “I want to go home to Mamma.”
Larry said not very eagerly: “I’ll be glad to take you home if . .
Dorothy said she wanted to go. Nora fussed over her, but did not try to talk her out of going. Larry, trying not to look too unwilling, found his hat and coat. He and Dorothy left.
Nora shut the door behind them and leaned against it. “Explain that to me, Mr. Charalambides,” she said.
I shook my head.
She sat on the sofa beside me. “Now out with it. If you skip a single word, I’ll–”
“I’d have to have a drink before I could do any talking.”
She cursed me and brought me a drink. “Has he confessed?”
“Why should he? You can’t plead guilty of murder in the first degree. There were too many murders–and at least two of them were too obviously done in cold blood–for the District Attorney to let him plead guilty of second-degree murder. There’s nothing for him to do but fight it out.”
“But he did commit them?”
“Sure.”
She pushed my glass down from my mouth. “Stop stalling and tell me about it.”
“Well, it figures out that he and Julia had been gypping Wynant for some time. He’d dropped a lot of money in the market and he’d found out about her past–as Morelli hinted–and the pair of them teamed up on the old man. We’re sicking accountants on Macaulay’s books and Wynant’s and shouldn’t have much trouble tracing some of the loot from one to the other.”
“Then you don’t know positively that he was robbing Wynant?”
“Sure we know. It doesn’t click any other way. The chances are Wynant was going away on a trip the 3rd of October, because he did draw five thousand dollars out of the bank in cash, but he didn’t close up his shop and give up his apartment. That was done by Macaulay a few days later. Wynant was killed at Macaulay’s in Scarsdale on the night of the 3rd. We know that because on the morning of the 4th, when Macaulay’s cook, who slept at home, came to work, Macaulay met her at the door with some kind of trumped-up complaint and two weeks’ wages and fired her on the spot, not letting her in the house to find any corpses or bloodstains.”
“How did you find that out? Don’t skip details.”
“Ordinary routine. Naturally after we grabbed him we went to his office and house to see what we could find out–you know, where-were-youon-the-night-of-June-6, 1894-stuff–and the present cook said she’d only been working for him since the 8th of October, and that led to that. We also found a table with a very faint trace of what we hope is human blood not quite scrubbed out. The scientific boys are making shavings of it now to see if they can soak out any results for us.” (It turned out to be beef blood.)
“Then you’re not sure he–”
“Stop saying that. Of course we’re sure. That’s the only way it clicks. Wynant had found out that Julia and Macaulay were gypping him and also thought, rightly or wrongly, that Julia and Macaulay were cheating on him–and we know he was jealous–so he went up there to confront him with whatever proof he had, and Macaulay, with prison looking him in the face, killed the old man. Now don’t say we’re not sure. It doesn’t make any sense otherwise. Well, there he is with a corpse, one of the harder things to get rid of. Can I stop to take a swallow of whisky?”