'Over you?' His eyes, his mouth were O s of astonishment. He stared at Carmel. 'I don t believe you.'
Crane admired the melodrama. A woman telling her husband s brother that her husband murdered his cousin. He wondered if Ann had caught the additional implication of Jameson s surprising identification of Peter March. It would be strange, he thought, if she were in love with Peter and Williams turned him up for murder. He looked at Ann, but her green eyes were on Peter March.
Carmel spoke in a whisper. 'John did kill Richard, though. And then he killed himself.'
Belief and a trace of horror came into Peter s eyes. 'It wasn t an accident?'
'He left a note saying he d killed Richard. Paul Woodrin saw it.'
Crane felt almost certain she was telling the truth. He was sure there had been a note. Dr Woodrin wouldn t lie about that. Of course, she could have written the note herself, showed it to the doctor, then destroyed it.
'But why didn t…?' Peter began.
'I was afraid it would kill your father.'
Peter collapsed in the big damask chair opposite the couch. 'Poor John…' He looked up at Carmel. 'You should have told me.' He looked at Crane… suddenly became conscious of him. 'But these people… how do…?'
'I told them,' Carmel said. 'I knew they suspected something ever since the night you tried to get my letters for me.' She was very pale, but emotion made her black eyes magnificent. 'And I wanted disinterested advice… whether or not I should tell… Alice s hints…'
'What did you say?' Peter asked Crane.
'I told her to see if the gossip didn t blow over.'
Peter nodded. He said, 'Carmel, I want to talk with you.'
She said, 'All right.'
They went to the door. 'Good-by, and thank you,' Carmel said.
'We haven t done anything,' Ann said.
Back in the living room, Crane said, 'Was something said about food?'
Ann said, 'I think I believe Carmel.'
Crane sat on the couch.
'Peter believed her,' Ann said.
'You like Peter, don t you?'
'Yes, I do.'
'How would you feel if I told you Doc Williams just slipped a noose over his neck?'
'Bill!' Her green eyes widened. 'You re joking!'
Williams came in from the dining room. 'Not much!' He had a scotch and soda in his hand. 'Jameson certainly put Peter on the spot. It was Peter, not John, who asked about Richard s Brookfield house.'
Ann objected, 'But Jameson identified John s photograph.'
Crane said, 'Newspaper photographs are lousy.'
'And John and Peter looked a lot alike,' Williams said. 'That s what gave me the idea of having Jameson see Peter in person.' He was very proud of himself.
Ann s lips were scornful. 'That doesn t make him a murderer.'
Williams said, 'The voices… They sounded alike, too.'
Crane explained, ' Peter, not John, suspected Richard was having an affair with Carmel. So Peter caught her parked with Richard in the car. Carmel thought it was John in the darkness because their voices sounded alike.'
'And when Peter comes back to the party,' Williams said, 'Richard has had a whiff too much of gas.'
Crane improvised, 'And then John becomes suspicious of Peter… and gets killed, too.'
'But the suicide note,' Ann objected. 'You can t get around the suicide note.'
'Who d know John s writing? Who could best forge the note?'
After a long time, Ann said, 'Peter, I guess.'
CHAPTER XIII
Miss Kirby did not appear particularly surprised when Crane, at three-fifteen on Saturday, buzzed for her, and announced he was leaving.
'I lasted five minutes longer than last time,' he informed her proudly.
This did not make the profound impression he expected. She said, 'Yes sir.'
He got his hat and the tan camel s-hair topcoat. 'You might send up that piece of copy on my desk.'
Miss Kirby picked up a large sheet of gloss paper, glanced at it nearsightedly through her spectacles and turned pale. 'Oh, Mr Crane!' she exclaimed, holding it out to him.
At the top of the page was an ink drawing of a refrigerator, and in it was the body of a man, folded up in such a double-jointed manner that his knees crossed in back of his neck. Beneath the picture was the caption: Don t Bury Your Husband: Freeze Him in Your Rapo-Arctic!
'I don t think that s the one I meant,' Crane said. Miss Kirby found another sheet. 'This must be it.'
'Does it say: Your Kitchen is Our Laboratory?'
'Yes sir.'
On the way out, Crane stopped in Simeon March s office.
Back of a gigantic desk, with tall windows behind him, the old man looked small and slightly frail. That is, until he growled at Crane, 'Well, what have you been doing?' His voice sounded as virile as a tugboat captain s.
'We ve been looking up one of Richard s girls.'
'What s that going to get you? Everybody knows Richard had girls.'
'We thought she might throw some light on the death.'
'Waste of time.' The old man s maple-sugar eyes glowed. 'You know where to look.'
His wrinkled, brown face resembled an angry Indian sachem s. Coming from behind, the light changed the wrinkles into dark lines, made him look as though he had fallen face first into a briar bush. The tan-and-brown spots on his skin looked like bruises.
'Get Carmel,' he said.
Crane felt there must be an undisclosed reason for his hatred of Carmel. He asked, 'Why are you so sure she s the murderer, Mr March?'
'Look at her,' the old man barked. 'Wears clothes like… like a kept woman.'
Crane switched to another angle. 'Why do you think Carmel killed Richard?'
The old man regarded him so viciously for a moment that Crane thought he was enraged at the question. Then he said, 'I suppose you ll have to know.'
He growled out the story without taking the cigar from his mouth. He d heard Carmel and Richard talking with suspicious intimacy at a party one night about four months before Richard s death. John had been going out of town on business a great deal, and he had assigned a company detective to watch Carmel during these periods.
'Richard, too?' Crane interrupted.
The old man shook his head. The detective had reported that Carmel spent a great deal of time with Richard, so the old man had gone to Carmel, he asserted, and told her he knew she was having an affair with Richard. He threatened to tell John unless she broke it off. She denied that she loved Richard, but he was adamant. 'Never let me hear of your being alone with him, or I ll run you out of town,' he had told her.
She had finally agreed not to see him any more.
Crane couldn t resist a question. 'But why did she kill him?'
'He wouldn t give her up,' Simeon March said, looking at Crane through shrewd eyes. 'So she had to kill him.'
'But then, when things were fixed up, why did she kill John?'
'She didn t love him, wanted to get rid of him.' For an instant there was real pain in his deep-set eyes. 'And she knew I d stop a divorce.'
Crane said, 'That s a pretty elemental view. Carmel kills one man because she loves him, another because
