“I will. That’s the rub. I’ll hope to get it back.”
“But if you don’t?”
“Then I don’t.”
“There should be a written agreement.”
“There won’t be. I take the risk of failure; you’ll have to take the risk of my depravity.” Wolfe’s voice suddenly became a bellow. “Confound it, it is your client who has been convicted of murder, not mine!”
Freyer was startled, as well he might be. Wolfe can bellow. “I meant no offense,” he said mildly. “I had no thought of depravity. As you say, the risk is yours. I accept your proposal. Now what?”
Wolfe glanced up at the wall clock and settled back in his chair. A full hour till lunchtime. “Now,” he said, “I want all the facts. I’ve read the newspaper accounts, but I want them from you.”
Chapter 5
PETER HAYS HAD BEEN convicted of killing the husband of the woman he loved, on the evening of January 3, by shooting him in the side of the head, above the left ear, with a Marley.38. I might as well account for things as I go along, but I can’t account for the Marley because it had been taken by a burglar from a house in Poughkeepsie in 1947 and hadn’t been seen in public since. The prosecution hadn’t explained how Peter Hays had got hold of it, so you can’t expect me to.
The victim, Michael M. Molloy, forty-three, a real-estate broker, had lived with his wife, no children, in a four-room apartment on the top floor, the fifth, of a remodeled tenement on East 52nd Street. There was no other apartment on the floor. At 9:18 P.M. on January 3 a man had phoned police headquarters and said he had just heard a shot fired on one of the upper floors of the house next door. He gave the address of the house next door, 171 East 52nd Street, but hung up without giving his name, and he had never been located, though of course the adjoining houses had been canvassed. At 9:23 a cop from a prowl car had entered the building. When he got to the top floor, after trying two floors below and drawing blanks, he found the door standing open and entered. Two men were inside, one alive and one dead. The dead one, Molloy, was on the living-room floor. The live one, Peter Hays, with his hat and topcoat on, had apparently been about to leave, and when the cop had stopped him he had tried to tear away and had to be subdued. When he was under control the cop had frisked him and found the Marley.38 in his topcoat pocket.
All that had been in the papers. Also:
Peter Hays was a copywriter. He had been with the same advertising agency, one of the big ones, for eight years, and that was as far back as he went. His record and reputation were clean, with no high or low spots. Unmarried, he had lived for the past three years in an RBK-room, bath, and kitchenette-on West 63rd Street. He played tennis, went to shows and movies, got along all right with people, had a canary in his room, owned five suits of clothes, four pairs of shoes, and three hats, and had no car. A key to the street door of 171 East 52nd Street had been found on his key ring. The remodeled building had a do-it-yourself elevator, and there was no doorman.
The District Attorney’s office, the personnel of Homicide West, all the newspapers, and millions of citizens, were good and sore at Peter Hays because he wasn’t playing the game. The DA and cops couldn’t check his version of what had happened, and the papers couldn’t have it analyzed by experts, and the citizens couldn’t get into arguments about it, because he supplied no version. From the time he had been arrested until the verdict came, he had refused to supply anything at all. He had finally, urged by his lawyer, answered one question put by the DA in a private interview: had he shot Molloy? No. But why and when had he gone to the apartment? What were his relations with Molloy and with his wife? Why was a key to that building on his key ring? Why did he have the Marley.38 in his pocket? No reply. Nor to a thousand other questions.
Other people had been more chatty, some of them on the witness stand. The Molloy’s daily maid had seen Mrs. Molloy and the defendant in close embrace on three different occasions during the past six months, but she had not told Mr. Molloy because she liked Mrs. Molloy and it was none of her business. Even so, Mr. Molloy must have been told something by somebody, or seen or heard something, because the maid had heard him telling her off and had seen him twisting her arm until she collapsed. A private detective, hired by Molloy late in November, had seen Mrs. Molloy and Peter Hays meet at a restaurant for lunch four times, but nothing juicer. There were others, but those were the outstanding items.
The prosecution’s main attraction, though not its mainstay, had been the widow, Selma Molloy. She was twenty-nine, fourteen years younger than her husband, and was photogenic, judging from the pictures the papers had run. Her turn on the witness stand had sparked a debate. The Assistant DA had claimed the right to ask her certain questions because she was a hostile witness, and the judge had refused to allow the claim. For example, the ADA had tried to ask her, “Was Peter Hays your lover?” but he had to settle for “What were the relations between you and Peter Hays?”
She said she liked Peter Hays very much. She said she regarded him as a good friend, and she had affection for him, and believed he had affection for her. The relations between them could not properly be called misconduct. As for the relations between her and her husband, she had begun to feel less than a year after their marriage, which had taken place three years ago, that the marriage had been a mistake. She should have known it would be, since for a year before their marriage she had worked for Molloy as his secretary, and she should have known what kind of man he was. The prosecutor had fired at her, “Do you think he was the kind of man who should be murdered?” and Freyer had objected and been sustained, and the prosecutor had asked, “What kind of man was he?” Freyer had objected to that too as calling for an opinion on the part of the witness, and that had started another debate. It was brought out, specifically, that he had falsely accused her of infidelity, had physically mistreated her, had abused her in the presence of others, and had refused to let her get a divorce.
She had seen Peter Hays at a New Year’s Eve party three days before the murder, and had not seen him since until she entered the courtroom that day. She had spoken with him on the telephone on January 1 and again on January 2, but she couldn’t remember the details of the conversations, only that nothing noteworthy had been said. The evening of January 3 a woman friend had phoned around seven-thirty to say that she had an extra ticket for a show and invited her to come, and she had accepted. When she got home, around midnight, there were policemen in her apartment and she was told the news.
Freyer had not cross-examined her. One of the hundred or so details of privileged communications between a lawyer and a client furnished us by Freyer explained that. He had promised Peter Hays he wouldn’t.
Wolfe snorted, not his laughing snort. “Isn’t it,” he inquired, “a function of counsel to determine the strategy and tactics of defense?”
