Plot It Yourself

but when I added that I would also advise Mr Imhof to prosecute she took alarm. That was highly suggestive. Upon consideration I sent her home, and I did something I might have done much sooner if there had been the faintest reason to suspect you. I read your book. Knock at My Door, or enough of it to conclude that you had written the stories on which the first three claims had been based. That was manifest from the characteristics of your style.”

Her head moved, slowly, from side to side. “No,” she said. “You knew before that. You knew the third time we were here. You said it was possible it was one of us.”

“That was only talk. At that point anything was possible.”

“I was sure you knew,” she insisted. “I was sure you had read my book. That was what I’d been afraid of since the second time we came, when you told us about comparing the stories. That was when I realized how stupid I had been not to write them in a different style, but you see I didn’t really know I had a style. I thought only good writers had a style. But I was stupid. That was my big mistake. Wasn’t it?”

They were all staring at her, and no wonder. From her tone and her expression you might have thought Wolfe was conducting a class in the technique of writing and she was anxious to learn. “I doubt if it could properly be called a mistake,” he said. “A little thoughtless, perhaps. After all, no one had ever compared the stories before I did, and I wouldn’t have compared them with your book if I hadn’t got that hint from Miss Porter. Indeed, Miss Wynn, I wouldn’t say that you made any mistakes at all.”

“Of course I did.” She was quietly indignant. “You’re just being polite. All my life I’ve been making mistakes. The biggest one was when I decided I was going to be a writer, but of course I was young then. You don’t mind if I talk about it? I want to.”

“Go ahead. But fourteen people are listening.”

“It’s you I want to talk to. I’ve been wanting to ever since the first time we came and I thought you knew. If I had talked to you then I wouldn’t have had to-to do what I did. But I didn’t think you would say I didn’t make any mistakes. I shouldn’t have told Alice about you. You told us when you started, I mean when you started today, that she gave it away that she knew about our hiring you when Mr Goodwin told her he had an offer from a newspaper, and so your attention was focused on her. But I had made the worst mistake with her before that, when she claimed my book was plagiarized from a story she wrote. Of course I know that was poetic justice. I know I deserved it. But after so many years, when I actually had a book published, and the first printing sold out, and then three more printings, and it was actually third on the best-seller list, and then my publisher got that letter from Alice, I lost my head. That was an awful mistake. I should have told her I wouldn’t pay her anything, not a cent. I should have dared her to try to make me. But I was so scared I gave in to her. Wasn’t that a mistake?”

Wolfe grunted. “If so, not an egregious one. She had the upper hand-especially after the manuscript of her story was found in a file in your publisher’s office.”

“But that was part of the mistake, my putting it there. She made me. She said if I didn’t she would tell everything-about the claim against Ellen Sturdevant, and of course that would bring it out about the others. And she told me-”

“My God.” Reuben Imhof groaned. He had gripped her arm. “Amy, look at me. Damn it, look at me! You put that manuscript in that file?”

“You’re hurting my arm,” she said.

“Look at me! You did that?”

“I’m talking to Mr Wolfe.”

“Incredible.” He groaned again. He let go of her arm. “Absolutely incredible.”

Wolfe asked, “You were saying, Miss Wynn?”

“I was saying that she told me about what she had put in an envelope and left with somebody to be opened if she died. I don’t see how you can say I didn’t make any mistakes. I hadn’t realized how dangerous it was for her to have the typewriter I used to write that story for her to use, ‘There Is Only Love.’ We thought it would be a good idea for her to have it because she was supposed to have written the story, but I hadn’t realized that it could be traced to me because I had bought it. I had bought it secondhand, but typewriters have numbers on them somewhere. You can’t say I didn’t make any mistakes. You ought to say I didn’t do anything right. Did I?”

“If by ‘right’ you mean ‘well,’ you did indeed.”

“What? What did I do well? Tell me.”

“It would take an hour, Miss Wynn. You did a thousand things well. Your conception and execution of the swindles were impeccable, providing for all details and avoiding all pitfalls. Your choice of accomplices was admirable. Your handling of the situation these past two weeks has been superb. I have had some experience with people under stress wearing masks, both men and women, and I have never seen finer performances than yours- the first time you called on me with your fellow committee members, two weeks ago today, when I questioned you at some length; the second time, when Mr Oshin made his suggestion about Simon Jacobs and asked you to contribute ten thousand dollars; later that day at Mr Imhofs office when Mr Goodwin was told of the discovery of the manuscript which you had yourself put in the file; the third time you came with the committee, when the question whether to dismiss me was debated; the meeting of that council yesterday, when that question was again discussed in my presence-your performance on all of those occasions was extraordinary.”

Wolfe turned a palm up. “On one occasion you showed ready and notable wit-on Friday, four days ago, when Miss Porter drove to New York to see you at your apartment. By then, of course, she was confronting you with a direr menace than exposure of your swindles; she was threatening to reveal you as a murderer. That is true?”

“Yes. That’s why she came to see me. How did I show any wit?”

Wolfe shook his head. “Mr Imhof used the right word for you. Miss Wynn. ‘Incredible.’ Apparently you have performed prodigies of sagacity and finesse without knowing it. Not surely by inadvertence; it must be that your singular faculties operate below the level of consciousness-or above it. Perhaps the psychologists should add a new term, superconscious. When Miss Porter came to your apartment on Friday afternoon did she tell you that she had been followed?”

“No. But I was afraid that maybe she had been.”