Killing Mrs. Fomos greatly increased the hazard of killing Miss Eads. If her body had been discovered sooner, as it might easily have been, and if that city detective-Auerbach, was it, Mr. Cramer?'
'Yes.' Cramer's eyes were narrowed at him.
'If he had got his notion about the keys more promptly, he would have got to Miss Eads's apartment before her return and would have found the murderer ambushed there. Surely the murderer was capable of calculating such a risk, and he would not have killed Mrs. Fomos except under a strong impulsion. This objection of course occurred to the police, and I understand that they met it by assuming that in his attempt to get the bag from Mrs. Fomos her assailant was recognized and so was compelled to kill her. That assumption was not impossible, but it implied that the murderer was an egregious bungler, and I doubted it. I preferred to assume exactly the opposite-that Mrs. Fomos had been killed, not because she had recognized her attacker, but because he knew she couldn't recognize him.'
'Is this for effect?' Skinner demanded. 'Or do you think you're getting somewhere?'
'I am already somewhere,' Wolfe retorted. 'I've just told you who the murderer is.'
Purley Stebbins stood up with his gun in his hand, his eyes on the cast, trying to keep them all in focus at once.
'Go on and spell it,' Cramer growled.
'He wanted the keys, certainly,' Wolfe conceded, 'but he didn't have to kill Mrs. Fomos to get them. He killed her because she was herself a danger to him, as great a danger as Miss Eads. It would have done him no good to kill the one unless he killed the other. That was my hypothesis as early as Tuesday evening, but there were then too many alternatives, more easily tested, to give it priority. Wednesday Mr. Goodwin called on Mrs. Jaffee and Mr. Fomos, and late that afternoon Mr. Irby came and provided me with bait to get you people here. Thursday morning Mrs. Jaffee came, as the result of a brilliant maneuver by Mr. Goodwin the day before, and gave me much better bait than Mr. Irby had supplied, and, as you all know, I used it. But for that maneuver by Mr. Goodwin, Mrs. Jaffee would not have come to see me, and almost certainly she would be alive now. That seems to me much firmer ground for his feeling of responsibility for her death than her phone call to him Thursday night and its sequel. It is regrettable, but not surprising, that his feeling was so intense as to warp his mental processes and pervert his judgment. I did and do sympathize with him.'
'Is all this necessary?' Bowen wanted to know.
'Perhaps not,' Wolfe allowed, 'but I'm exposing a murderer and claim a measure of indulgence. You must have expected to spend hours here. Am I tedious?'
'Go ahead.'
'And Thursday afternoon Mr. Irby returned with his client, Mr. Hagh, who had flown from Venezuela. I no longer needed him or his client as bait for you, but I invited them to join us that evening, provided they came as observers and not participants. As you know, they were here. What is it, Archie?'
'I'll tend to me,' I told him. I had left my chair and was moving. I won't say I had caught up with him, but at least I could see his dust, and I admit that I had also seen Saul Panzer, not with any flourish, take a gun from his pocket and rest it on his thigh. I did not display a gun. I merely circled around the end of the couch and stopped, and stood less than arm's length northwest of Eric Hagh's right shoulder. He didn't turn his head, but he knew I was there. His eyes were glued to Wolfe.
'Okay,' I told Wolfe. 'I'm not warped enough to break his neck. How come?'
Satisfied that I wasn't going to throw a tantrum, he returned to the Softdown quintet. 'When you left here Thursday evening, I had nothing new about you with regard to the murder of Miss Eads, but it seemed more than ever doubtful, under my hypothesis, that a motive could be found for any of you to kill Mrs. Fomos. As I said, I told Mr. Goodwin that I thought I knew who had committed the murders, but I also told him that there was a contradiction that had to be solved, and for that purpose I asked him to have Mrs. Jaffee here at eleven o'clock the next morning.'
He turned left. 'What was the contradiction, Mr. Cramer?'
Cramer shook his head. 'I'm not clear up with you. I suppose the point was that this Eric Hagh is not Hagh, he's a ringer, from what you said about him killing Mrs. Fomos because he knew she couldn't recognize him, but then where were you?'
'I was facing a contradiction.'
'What?'
'You should know. Among the items furnished by me to Lieutenant Rowcliff on Friday was a carbon copy of a report, typed by Mr. Goodwin, of his conversation with Mrs. Jaffee on Wednesday at her apartment. Surely you have read it, and this is an excerpt from it. I quote: 'That was the last letter I ever got from Pris. The very last. Maybe I still have it-I remember she enclosed a picture of him.'
'Mrs. Jaffee said that to Mr. Goodwin. It contradicted my hypothesis that the man calling himself Eric Hagh was an impostor; for if Mrs. Jaffee had seen a picture of Hagh, why didn't she denounce this man when she saw him here? It was to get an answer to that question that I asked Mr. Goodwin to have her here Friday morning.'
'Why didn't you ask her then and there?'
'If that's a challenge, Mr. Cramer, I ignore it. If it's a request for information, the-'
'It is.'
'Good. The circumstances were not favorable. My suspicion of Hagh had no support but a hypothesis, and I was not certain of the bona fides of Mrs. Jaffee herself. I wanted first to get an opinion from Mr. Goodwin and Mr. Parker, and Mrs. Jaffee was leaving with Mr. Parker. It was late at night, and I was tired. Of course I regret it. I regretted it only two hours after I had gone to bed, when I was awakened by the phone and Mr. Goodwin told me that Mrs. Jaffee had been murdered. Then, too late for her, I knew. I even got out of bed and sat in a chair, something I never do.'
'This is being recorded, Wolfe,' Bowen warned him. 'You say you knew the identity of a murderer. Whom did you notify?'
'Pfui. That's childish, Mr. Bowen. I had no evidence. You have had every scrap of information I have had, and the services of Mr. Goodwin to boot, which is a great advantage when his head is on straight. I had
