“Bold as you please,” Pollexfen said. “You must have been right about a key made from a wax impression. There’s no other way they could have gotten in.”
If that was the case, the key would be on Cullrane’s body or in Angelina Pollexfen’s purse. No pockets in what she was wearing-something else I’d noted and had already mentioned to Pollexfen. I sat silently with my teeth clamped together, listening to the scrape, scrape of his hands.
“Why were they still in there?” he said. “They must have heard Brenda calling them.”
Not necessarily. They evidently hadn’t heard the doorbell.
“But why did she shoot him? An argument? You think that’s it?”
“I’d rather not speculate.”
“Deliberate? An accident?”
I didn’t say anything.
“They must have been arguing,” Pollexfen said. “One of them took the shotgun down-a threat. They struggled over it and it went off accidentally… you think that’s the way it happened?”
“Your wife says she didn’t do it, Mr. Pollexfen.”
That came from Linda Yin, who had appeared in the doorway with Davis behind her. The two of them came into the parlor. “She’s conscious now. Lucid enough to make some sense.”
“Of course she’d say that. She’s never admitted to a wrongdoing in her life.”
“She says the last thing she remembers is having drinks with you and her brother over the noon hour.”
Pollexfen blew noisily through his nose. “We had drinks, yes. The three of us. But she was fine when I left for the auction.”
“What time was that?” Yin asked.
“Shortly after one.”
“She and Mr. Cullrane both here then?”
“Yes.”
“What do you think they were doing in your library?”
“Stealing more of my books. That’s obvious.”
“ More of your books?”
“Eight of my most valuable first editions disappeared two weeks ago. I filed a police report, for all the good it did. They got away with those so it made them bold enough to go after more.”
“How much value are we talking about?”
“Half a million dollars for the missing eight volumes.”
Davis blinked at the figure; Yin showed no reaction. She said, “Insured?”
“In that amount. Eventually I had no choice but to put in a claim with my insurance company.” Pollexfen gestured my way again. “That’s why he’s here. He’s investigating the claim for Great Western Insurance.”
Yin asked me, “Find out anything we should know?”
“Nothing conclusive,” I said. “No sign of the missing books, nothing definite to point to the thief or thieves.”
“My wife and her brother,” Pollexfen said, “working in cahoots. That’s obvious, too, now. I didn’t think it was possible for either of them to get into the library-you’ve seen that all the windows are barred, and I have the only key to the door locks-but they found a way.”
“Loose key in the victim’s pocket,” Davis said. He had a raspy smoker’s voice. “It fits the locks.”
“Made from a wax impression, probably.” Pollexfen directed a grudging look my way. “Somehow one or the other of them must have gotten access to my key just long enough.”
Yin said, “You say they were here when you left at one o’clock, nobody else in the house. Why do you suppose it took them three hours to go into the library?”
“I have no idea. You’ll have to ask Angelina.”
“What do you think happened in there?”
“The shooting? We were just talking about that. She shot him, on purpose or by accident-what else could it be? They were alone in a locked room.”
“Premeditated?”
“I don’t know, but I doubt it. Angelina can be cold-blooded, but not that cold-blooded. She wouldn’t have the gumption. Most likely they had some sort of fallingout, one or the other pulled the shotgun off the wall, there was a struggle, and the weapon discharged.”
“All of that with you and two other people in the house.”
“The library walls are thick enough to act as partial soundproofing,” Pollexfen said. “From inside you can’t hear what’s going on in other parts of the house unless you’re listening closely and sometimes not even then.”
Davis said, “It could’ve been suicide. Looks like the barrel was in his mouth or close to it when the gun went off.”
“That could have been a result of the struggle.”
“If he had his mouth open at the time.”
“Suicide is out of the question, Inspector. You didn’t know my brother-in-law. The man was incapable of selfdestruction. He was the most self-involved, narcissistic person I’ve ever known.”
“Sounds like the two of you didn’t get along.”
“We didn’t. It’s no secret.”
“The shotgun belongs to you, is that right?” Yin asked.
“Inherited from my father.”
“Kept it mounted on the wall above the fireplace?”
“Yes.”
“Loaded?”
“Yes.”
“Why keep a loaded weapon on display?”
“I really have no answer to that question,” Pollexfen said. “My father always kept it loaded and I saw no reason not to do the same. The library is my domain. No one is allowed in there without my being present, and I’ve never permitted anyone to touch the Parker.”
“Pretty large weapon for a woman to handle.”
“Not for Angelina. She’s fired it before, accurately. We used to go bird hunting together.”
Yin seemed satisfied on that point. “Tell us again what you saw and heard.”
“I didn’t see anything,” Pollexfen said. “Or hear anything except the shot when the three of us were in the hallway.”
“And you could tell that the report came from the library?”
“It couldn’t have come from anywhere else. We were on our way there when it happened. Angelina and Jeremy weren’t anywhere else in the house-clearly they had to be in the library.”
“The door was secured?”
“Double-locked, as always. The locks can be keyed from both sides.”
“One key for the pair?”
“Yes.”
“Who opened the locks? You?”
“I did,” I said.
“My hands were shaking too badly,” Pollexfen said.
She asked me, “You were the first into the room?”
“Yes.”
“Mr. Pollexfen go in, too?”
“No farther than the doorway,” he said.
“What about Brenda Koehler?”
“No,” I said. “She ran off to be sick.”
“Did you touch the victim or the weapon or anything else in there?”
“Only Mrs. Pollexfen. She was on the floor, moaning. Looked like she was suffering from shock.”
“Blowing a man’s head off would shock anybody,” Pollexfen said.
“So you picked her up and carried her into the spare bedroom.”
