“I do. With luck, five hours. Without it, five days. It would be simpler for you to tell me. How much have you lost?”
She blinked again. “How do you know I’ve lost anything?”
“I don’t. But Mr. Goodwin, who is himself an expert investigator, concluded from publications he found on that table that you are a chronic bettor. If so, there’s a fair chance that you keep a record of your gains and losses.” He turned to me. “Archie, your search was interrupted. Resume. See if you can find it.” Back to her. “At his elbow if you like, Miss Velardi. There is no question of pilfering.”
I went to the smaller chest. He was certainly crowding his luck. If she took this without calling a cop she might not be a murderess, but she sure had a tender spot she didn’t want touched.
Actually she didn’t just sit and take it. As I got a drawer handle to pull it open she loosened her tongue. “Look, Mr. Wolfe, I’m perfectly willing to tell you anything you want to know. Perfectly!” She was leaning toward him, her fingers still twisted. “Miss Hart said I mustn’t be surprised at anything you asked, but I was, so I guess I was flustered. There’s no secret about my liking to bet on the races, but the amounts I bet- that’s different. You see, I have friends who-well, they don’t want people to know they bet, so they give me money to bet for them. So it’s about a hundred dollars a week, sometimes more, maybe up to two hundred.”
If she liked to bet on any animals other than horses, one would have got her ten that she was a damn liar. Evidently Wolfe would have split it with me, since he didn’t even bother to ask her the names of the friends.
He merely nodded. “What is your salary?”
“It’s only sixty-five, so of course I can’t bet much myself.”
“Of course. About the windows in that front room. In summer weather, when one of you is on duty there at night, are the windows open?”
She was concentrating. “When it’s hot, yes. Usually the one in the middle. If it’s very hot, maybe all of them.”
“With the shades up?”
“Yes.”
“It was hot July fifteenth. Were the windows open that night?”
“I don’t know. I wasn’t here.”
“Where were you?”
“I was out in Jersey, in a car with a friend-Alice Hart. To get cooled off. We got back after midnight.”
Wonderful, I thought. That settled that. One woman might conceivably lie, but surely not two.
Wolfe was eying her. “If the windows were open and the shades up the evening of July fifteenth, as they almost certainly were, would anyone in her senses have proceeded to kill Marie Willis so exposed to view? What do you think?”
She didn’t call him on the pronoun. “Why, no,” she conceded. “That would have been-no, I don’t think so.”
“Then she-or he-must have closed the windows and drawn the shades before proceeding. How could Leonard Ashe, in the circumstances as given, have managed that without alarming Miss Willis?”
“I don’t know. He might have-no, I don’t know.”
“He might have what?”
“Nothing. I don’t know.”
“How well do you know Guy Unger?”
“I know him fairly well.”
She had been briefed all right. She was expecting that one.
“Have you seen much of him in the past two months?”
“No, very little.”
Wolfe reached in his pocket and got the snapshot and held it out. “When was this taken?”
She left the bed and was going to take it, but he held on to it. After a look she said, “Oh, that,” and sat down again. All of a sudden she exploded, indignation finally breaking through. “You took that from my drawer! What else did you take?” She sprang up, trembling all over. “Get out of here! Get out and stay out!”
Wolfe returned the snap to his pocket, arose, said, “Come, Archie, there seems to be a limit after all,” and started for the door. I followed.
He was at the sill when she darted past me, grabbed his arm, and took it back. “Wait a minute, I didn’t mean that. I flare up like that. I just-I don’t care about the damn picture.”
Wolfe pulled loose and got a yard of space. “When was it taken?”
“About two weeks ago-two weeks ago Sunday.”
“Who is the other woman?”
“Helen Weltz.”
“Who took it?”
