'George said he tried to tell Baldwin that's what would happen,' said Lowry, picking up the narrative, 'but she wouldn't listen. You could make a good case for her planning it to happen that way.'
'If she's it, she either switched the boards then,' Eberstadt offered, 'or counted on it looking like that's when it was done so that everyone had the opportunity.'
'The busboy probably noticed, so he had to be killed, too,' Lo wry concluded.
'Maybe it wasn't just ash stands she spoke to him about,' said Alan Knight, contributing his own scenario. 'Whati f she told him to meet her in the d'Aubigne Room, perhaps on the pretext of getting started on clearing the room? She doesn't have a real alibi for that time period.'
'That we know of,' Sigrid cautioned. 'Albee, Lowry, speak to the desk clerks who were on duty yesterday. See if they can confirm her story. Any further thoughts on Molly Baldwin?'
There were murmured negatives around the conference table.
'Moving on to Haines Froelick then. Peters, why don't you and Eberstadt give us what you have for him?'
'Like we said Saturday, he seems harmless enough,' said Peters. 'Used to living well at the Quill and Shutter Club off Park Avenue. Probably spends more on camera equipment than wine, women, or song, but that could be because he doesn't have as much money as he used to.'
'Oh?'
'Yeah,' said Matt Eberstadt, who had consumed three jelly doughnuts and was now virtuously sweetening his coffee with a packet of artificial sugar. 'We haven'ta ctually seen his bank statements, but we get the strong impression that money's been a little tight for Froelick these last couple of years-like his income wasn't keeping up with inflation.'
'Whose is?' asked Peters, who had no idea how he and his wife were going to fit a third baby into their budget. 'Anyhow, six million will buy a lot of cameras. You've seen Froelick. He's ordinary looking, well-dressed; hundreds like him go in and out of the Maintenon every day. There's nothing to say he'd be noticed if he wandered through the hall where they were coming and going, getting ready for the tournament. The seating chart was out in the hall by the display cases for anybody to stop and read, right? With the cases unlocked, it wouldn't take more than fifteen seconds to reach in and grab the cribbage board stick it in his pocket and be on his way.'
'Those boards are at least a foot long,' Albee objected.
'Well, up his sleeve then,' Peters said impatiently. 'Or inside his newspaper.' Young though he was, Peters wasn't entirely happy with female colleaguesa nd sometimes his disapproval slipped out. 'The point is, a man like Froelick is so ordinary, he's almost invisible.'
'And what about that fishy story of his yesterday?' asked Jim Lowry skeptically. 'Wandering around the hotel looking for a dime to bury with his cousin? Sounds like a good excuse to get back in the d'Aubigne Room.'
'It was a schilling,' Albee corrected.
'The coin was found,' Sigrid reminded them.
'Yeah,' said Eberstadt, 'and the housekeeper started crying when we took it over yesterday afternoon. Claims Wolferman always carried it.'
'Just the same, Froelick could have put it there before he killed Johnson,' said Elaine Albee. 'Then if anyone came in before he'd lured the busboy there-hey! Maybe that's how he got Johnson there in the first place. Everybody says he was a helpful kid. If some old gentleman came up to him and spun out a story about a lost lucky coin, it would be just like Johnson to stop whatever he was doing and go help look for it.'
'Nobody saw the kid go down theh all, so who's to say Froelick wasn't with him?' mused Peters, trying to compensate for his earlier shortness.
'We'll ask Dr. Gill if she noticed,' said Albee. She knew she was smarter than Peters and seldom took offense at his latent chauvinism.
'Okay,' said Sigrid, overlooking their byplay. 'That gives us Froelick and Baldwin as possibilities. Each could have rigged a bomb in order to inherit a cousin's wealth and then killed Johnson yesterday because he saw-or they thought he saw-them do it. Now what about the Russian? Lieutenant Knight?'
He shrugged. 'Obviously we haven't had a chance to talk to Commander Dixon yet, so all we have is Ivanovich's version of their friendship. It jibes, though, with what's been observed: he and Dixon 's father did meet in the Second World War as he described, he does have a picture of Commander Dixon as a baby, and they've maintained frequent contact since he arrived in New York in July.
'As far as we can ascertain, Ivanovich is unofficially retired. His duties witht he delegation are almost nonexistent and look like a polite fiction to justify what's essentially a nice long capitalistic vacation.'
As Knight paused to drink from a foam coffee cup, Sigrid was inwardly amused to note his drawl almost disappeared when he spoke officially.
'He may look like a friendly Russian teddy bear,' she said, 'but without a Red Snow link for Flythe, Vassily Ivanovich is our only sure expert in handling high explosives. Could he have been sent here simply because he once was friendly with Dixon 's father and could get close to her without arousing suspicion?'
'It's possible,' said Knight. ^
'What about her work?' asked Elaine Albee. 'Does Dixon work with secret documents or something? Is anything missing?'
Knight hesitated. 'I can't go into a lot of detail. There's not a lot to go into, actually. Most of her work is in a supervisory capacity and deals with computer-generated-well, call it code work. So there aren't any documents per se.'
'Floppy disks? Software?' asked Lowry.
'Her people have been working double shifts since Friday night trying to check. If anything's been compromised, they haven't found it. And just for the records, there's never been the slightest question of Commander Dixon's loyalty or integrity. Her people say that if Ivanovich had made the smallest overture no matter how subtle, she'd have reported it immediately.
'On the other hand,' he said with a wry grin, 'that's what every spy's friends and co-workers have said.'
'Makes security officers old before their years, I'm told,' Sigrid said with such dryness that Jim Lowry began to wonder for the first time if maybe Tillie'd been right about the lieutenant having a sense of humor.
'The problem with Ivanovich, though,' she continued, 'is that he's at least six-three and doesn't look like Peters' invisible man. If Ivanovich had been lurking around the Maintenon's display cases Thursday, they certainly would have spotted him.'
Elaine began riffling through her notes.
'I can't find it right this minute, but someone-oh, here it is. One of the players was ticked off because Ivanovich got up and walked out on their match a few minutes after eleven o'clock.'
'Yes, he followed us out into the hall,' Sigrid said.
'What annoyed the man was that Ivanovich was late getting back after the break. If you're more than five minutes late, it's supposed to be an automatic forfeit; but the guy decided to be nice about it and then, two hands into their match, Ivanovich just split.'
Alan Knight recalled the timetable. 'Pernell Johnson was last seen at ten-forty-one. Flythe called for order around ten-fifty-five, so that makes it no earlier than eleven o'clock for Ivanovich to sit down to play.' The drawl was back. 'Looks like a few cribbage players'll have to be questioned again; see if any of 'em saw what Comrade Ivanovich was doing during that time.'
Albee grinned and said she'd be plumb tickled to do that little old thing.
'Has anyone spoken to Johnson's aunt?' asked Sigrid sharply. There wasn o criticism in her tone but the others shifted uncomfortably as her slate-colored eyes swept around the table.
'I'll go,'' volunteered Jim Lowry, somewhat nettled with Elaine for flirting with Knight.
'That brings us back to Ted Flythe. Even without a Red Snow connection, he's still in the running. He was in the hotel Wednesday morning when the CUNY professors met to discuss their dinner, he had ample opportunity to steal a cribbage board from the display and switch it when the ashtrays were being changed, and so far as we know he doesn't have an alibi for those missing fourteen minutes when Johnson was killed. Somewhere we might find that his path
Matt Eberstadt cleared his throat. 'Now that everything's up for grabs again, what about the possibility that the bomb was meant for Tillie?'
'I don't know,' Sigrid said doubtfully. 'We haven't seen any linkage. On the other hand, if the commander hadn't dropped a peg so that her chair was pushed away from the table and Tilliew as actually under the table when the
