fifteen.”
Wolfe turned. “Mrs. Molloy, I wonder that you haven’t considered the possible significance of this. The anonymous call to the police, saying that a shot had been heard, was at nine-eighteen. The police arrived at nine-twenty-three. Even if he waited to see them arrive, and he probably didn’t, he could have reached the theater before the first act ended. Didn’t that occur to you?”
She was squinting at him. “If I understand you-you mean didn’t it occur to me that Jerry or Tom might have killed Mike?”
“Obviously. Didn’t it?”
“No!” She made it a little louder than it had to be, and I hoped Wolfe understood that she was raising her voice not at him, but at herself. It hadn’t occurred to her because the minute she had learned, on getting home that January night, that her husband had been found with a bullet in his head, and that P.H., with a gun in his pocket, had tried to force his way out, she thought she knew what had happened, and it had settled in her like a lump of lead. But she wasn’t going to tell Wolfe that. She told him instead, “There was no reason for Jerry to kill him. Or Tom. Why? And they had been in the bar across the street. Tom came not long after Rita and I went in, and said he needed a drink, and they went and had one.”
“Which one of them told you that?”
“Both of them. They told Rita and me, and we said they must have had more than one.”
Wolfe grunted. “Go back a little. Wouldn’t it have been the natural thing for Mr. Arkoff to leave the ticket at the box office instead of waiting in the lobby?”
“Not the way it was. Rita didn’t ask him to leave it at the box office, she told him to, and he doesn’t like to have her tell him to do things. So she does.” She came forward in her chair. “Listen, Mr. Wolfe,” she said earnestly. “If that man getting killed, if that means what you think it does, I don’t care what happens to anybody. I haven’t been caring what happened to me, I’ve just been feeling I might as well be dead, and I’m certainly not going to start worrying about other people, not even my best friends. But I think this is no use. Even if they lied about being in the bar, neither of them had any reason!”
“We’ll see about that,” he told her. “Someone had reason to fear Johnny Keems enough to kill him.” He glanced up at the clock. “Luncheon will be ready in seven minutes. You’ll join us? You too, Saul. Afterward you’ll stay here to be on hand if Mr. Parker needs you. And Mrs. Molloy, you’ll stay too and tell me everything you know about your friends, and you’ll invite them to join us here at six o’clock.”
“But I can’t!” she protested. “How can I? Now?”
“You said you weren’t going to worry about them. Yesterday morning Peter Hays, talking with Mr. Goodwin, used the same words you have just used. He said he might as well be dead. I intend that both of you-”
“Oh!” she cried, to me. “You saw him? What did he say?”
“I was only with him a few minutes,” I told her. “Except that he might as well be dead, not much. He can tell you himself when we finish this job.” I went to Wolfe. “I’ve got to call Purley. What do I tell him?”
He pinched his nose. He has an idea that pinching his nose makes his sense of smell keener, and a faint aroma of cheese dumplings was coming to us from the kitchen. “Tell him that Mr. Keems was working for me last evening, investigating a confidential matter, but I don’t know whom he had been just prior to his death; and that we’ll inform him if and when we get information that might be useful. I want to speak with those people before he does.”
As I turned to dial, Fritz entered to announce lunch.
Chapter 10
NOT LONG AGO I got a letter from a woman who had read some of my accounts of Nero Wolfe’s activities, asking me why I was down on marriage. She said she was twenty-three years old and was thinking of having a go at it herself. I wrote her that as far as I knew there was absolutely nothing wrong with marriage; the trouble was the way people handled it, and I gave her a couple of examples. The examples I used were Mr. and Mrs. Jerome Arkoff and Mr. and Mrs. Thomas L. Irwin, though I didn’t mention their names, and I had got my material from what I saw and heard in the first five minutes after they arrived at Wolfe’s place that Thursday at six o’clock.
They all arrived together, and there was a little bustle in the hall, getting their things off and disposed of. That was finished and I was ready to herd them down the hall and into the office when Rita Arkoff touched her husband’s elbow, pointed to a chair against the wall, and told him, “Your hat, Jerry. Hang it up.”
No wonder he hadn’t left the ticket at the box office. Before he could react normally, like making a face at her or telling her to go to hell, I got the hat myself and put it on the rack, and we proceeded to the office, where the Irwins immediately contributed their share. I had the chairs spaced comfortably to give everyone elbow room, but Tom Irwin pushed his close to his wife’s, sat, and took her hand in his and held onto it. I am not by any means against holding hands, in wedded bliss or unwedded, but only if both hands want to, and Fanny Irwin didn’t. She didn’t actually try to pull it away, but she sure would have liked to. I hope the examples I gave her will keep my twenty-three-year-old correspondent from developing into an order-giver or a one-way hand-holder, but leave it to her, she’ll find some kind of monkey wrench to toss into the machinery, and if she doesn’t her husband will.
However, I’m getting ahead of myself. Before six o’clock came, and brought the two couples, there were other happenings. My lunch was interrupted twice. Fred Durkin phoned to say that he had seen the soda jerk who had moved to Jersey, and got nothing, and had worn out his welcome at all places with phone booths within two blocks of 171 East 52nd Street. I told him to come in. Orrie Cather phoned to ask if we had an administrator yet, and I told him also to come in. They arrived before we finished lunch, and, back in the office, Wolfe told them about Johnny Keems.
They agreed with Saul and me that the odds were big that the car that had hit enough of him to kill him had been not careless but careful. They hadn’t had much love for him, but they had worked a lot with him. As Fred Durkin said, “Lots of worse guys are still walking around.” Orrie Cather said, “Yes, and one of them has got something coming.” No one mentioned that until he got it they had better keep an eye out when crossing a street, but they were all thinking it.
