going to the electric chair, but whoever did that to Ann Amory isn’t getting any discount from me. If it was Lily Rowan, you don’t have to worry about means and opportunity. She admits she was there, and so was the scarf; I suppose you know it was Ann’s. So dig up a motive for her, and you’re set.”
“A motive would help.” Cramer was eyeing me. “Up at the Flamingo Club Monday night. It’s hard to get anything definite from that bunch, but the impression seems to be that she was getting ready to throw the furniture at you when you ran. Taking the Amory girl with you. Was she sore because she was jealous? Was she jealous of Ann Amory? Was she jealous enough to go down there the next day and lose her temper? I’m asking.”
I shook my head. “You’re flattering me, Inspector. I don’t arouse passions like that. It’s my intellect women like. I inspire them to read good books, but I doubt if I could inspire even Lizzie Borden to murder. You can forget the Flamingo Club. It wasn’t even a tiff. You say you know Lily Rowan. She had given me the tip on Ann Amory being in trouble, as I’ve told you, and she was sore because I was following it up without letting her in on it. You’ll have to do better on motive than that. I’m not saying-”
The phone rang. Cramer answered it, listened a minute, grunted instructions, pushed the phone back, and stood up.
“They’re there,” he announced. “Both of them. Let’s go.” He didn’t look happy. “You handle her, Wolfe. I don’t want to see her until I have to.”
Chapter 12
The trouble was, I couldn’t enjoy it.
It was okay again, and it was my doing. The office was dusted and tidied up. Wolfe was in his made-to-order chair back of his desk. There was a bottle of beer in front of him. Faint sounds could be heard of Fritz busy in the kitchen. I had done it in less than 48 hours. But I couldn’t enjoy it. First, on account of Ann Amory. I had gone to see her with the big idea of getting Wolfe to get her out of trouble, and what had happened-well, I had got her out of trouble, all right. She wasn’t ever going to have any more trouble.
Second, Lily Rowan. Without trying to analyze all my feelings about her, it was a cinch there was nothing attractive in the notion of helping to send her up the river, to be taken down the corridor on a summer night to sit in the chair that nobody ever sits in more than once. On the other hand, if she had gone completely haywire, or maybe had some reason I didn’t know about, and had pulled that scarf around Ann’s neck, I couldn’t say I didn’t want that to happen. I did want it to happen. But the net result of things was that I wasn’t enjoying any triumph at seeing the office back in commission again.
I had supposed that Wolfe would take them separately, but he didn’t. I was at my desk with my notebook. Roy Douglas was seated off to my right, facing Wolfe, and Lily was in the red leather chair near the other end of Wolfe’s desk. The door to the front room was open, and around the corner, out of sight, Cramer and Stebbins were planted. Lily and Roy didn’t know they were there. Another thing that was eating me was the expression on Lily’s face and the way she was acting. The way she had spoken to Wolfe and me. There was that little twist to a corner of her mouth, so slight that it had taken me a year to get onto it, that was there when she was betting the stack on four spades with nothing but a six of clubs in the hole. It made her look cocky and made you feel that she was so sure of herself that you might as well quit. Even when you knew about it, you had to be careful not to let it take you in.
Wolfe was as exasperating as I had ever heard him-I mean exasperating to me. But I understood it, or thought I did; it was a war of nerves with Lily, who had to sit there and listen to it. He asked Roy about the loft, the pigeons, how he had first met Miss Leeds and her mother, Mrs. Chack, Ann, Leon Furey, how often had he been in the Chack-Amory apartment, how long had he lived at 316 Barnum Street, where did he live before that, how well did he know Lily Rowan, and on around the mulberry bush. As time dragged on he got my notebook filled with sixteen bushels of useless facts. Neither Leon nor Roy paid any rent for their rooms, Roy had been up on the roof exercising pigeons the afternoon old Mrs. Leeds had died, and had learned about it from Leon when he came down at dark. The upkeep of the loft amounted to around $4,000 a year, including purchase of new birds. About half of it came from prize money and the rest from Miss Leeds, formerly from her mother. Mrs. Leeds had threatened to tear the loft down, Roy admitted that, but then she was threatening everybody with everything, including her own daughter, and no one took it seriously. Roy had not known Lily Rowan. He had heard Ann mention her, that was about all. He couldn’t remember that Ann had ever said anything special about her.
No, he said, Ann had not told him what kind of trouble she was in, or who or what it was about, but from the way she acted he knew something was worrying her. My coming to take Ann to see Lily Rowan on Monday, and my coming back the next day to see him, had made him curious, and since he and Ann were engaged to be married he felt he had a right to know what was going on, so he came to ask me about it. He insisted that was the only reason he came to see me. He had no idea at all that Ann was in danger, and certainly no urgent danger like someone wanting to kill her, and he had no notion who had done it or why. He was sure it couldn’t have been anybody at 316 Barnum Street, because they all liked her, even Leon Furey, who was cynical about everything.
At 5:20 Lily Rowan said, “Don’t talk so loud, Roy. You’d better whisper. You might wake him up.”
I was inclined to agree with her. Wolfe was leaning back comfortably in his chair, his arms folded, with his eyes closed, and I had a suspicion that he was about two-thirds asleep. He had finished two bottles of beer, after going without for over a month, and he was back in the only chair in the world he liked, and his insane project of going outdoors and walking fast twice a day was only a hideous memory.
He heaved a deep sigh and half opened his eyes, with their focus on Lily.
“It is no occasion for drollery, Miss Rowan,” he muttered at her. “Especially for you. You are suspected of murder. At a minimum that is nothing to be jocund about.”
“Ha,” she said. She didn’t laugh; she merely said, “Ha.”
Wolfe shook his head. “I assure you, madam, it is not a time to ha. The police suspect you. They will annoy you and irritate you. They will ask questions of your friends and enemies. They will dig into your past. They will do it poorly, without any discrimination, and that will make it worse. They will go back as far as they can, for they know that Miss Amory’s father worked for your father a long while ago, and they will surmise-probably they
