“I never read anything he wrote in his study.”
“You read the note he left the time Verringer took him away. You even dug something out of the wastebasket.”
“That was different,” she said coolly. “I was looking for a clue to where he might have gone.”
“Okay,” I said, and leaned back. “Is there any more?”
She shook her head slowly, with a deep sadness. “I suppose not. At the very last, the afternoon he killed himself, he may have remembered. We’ll never know. Do we want to know?”
Spencer cleared his throat. “What was Marlowe supposed to do in all this? It was your idea to get him here. You talked me into that, you know.”
“I was terribly afraid. I was afraid of Roger and I was afraid for him. Mr. Marlowe was Paul’s friend, almost the last person to see him who knew him. Paul might have told him something. I had to be sure. If he was dangerous, I wanted him on my side. If he found out the truth, there might still be some way to save Roger.”
Suddenly and for no reason that I could see, Spencer got tough. He leaned forward and pushed his jaw out.
“Let me get this straight, Eileen. Here was a private detective who was already in bad with the police. They’d had him in jail. He was supposed to have helped Paul—I call him that because you do—jump the country to Mexico. That’s a felony, if Paul was a murderer. So if he found out the truth and could clear himself, he would just sit on his hands and do nothing. Was that your idea?”
“I was afraid, Howard. Can’t you understand that? I was living in the house with a murderer who might be a maniac. I was alone with him a large part of the time.”
“I understand that,” Spencer said, still tough. “But Marlowe didn’t take it on, and you were still alone. Then Roger fired the gun off and for a week after that you were alone. Then Roger killed himself and very conveniently it was Marlowe who was alone that time.”
“That is true,” she said. “What of it? Could I help it?”
“All right,” Spencer said. “Is it just possible you thought Marlowe might find the truth and with the background of the gun going off once already, just kind of hand it to Roger and say something like, Look, old man, you’re a murderer and I know it and your wife knows it. She’s a fine woman. She has suffered enough. Not to mention Sylvia Lennox’s husband. Why not do the decent thing and pull the trigger and everybody will assume it was just a case of too much wild drinking? So I’ll stroll down by the lake and smoke a cigarette, old man. Good luck and goodbye. Oh, here’s the gun. It’s loaded and it’s all yours.”
“You’re getting horrible, Howard. I didn’t think anything of the sort.”
“You told the deputy Marlowe had killed Roger. What was that supposed to mean?”
She looked at me briefly, almost shyly. “I was very wrong to say that. I didn’t know what I was saying.”
“Maybe you thought Marlowe had shot him,” Spencer suggested calmly.
Her eyes narrowed. “Oh no, Howard. Why? Why would he do that? That’s an abominable suggestion.”
“Why?” Spencer wanted to know. “What’s abominable about it? The police had the same idea. And Candy gave them a motive. He said Marlowe was in your room for two hours the night Roger shot a hole in his ceiling—after Roger had been put to sleep with pills.”
She flushed to the roots of her hair. She stared at him dumbly.
“And you didn’t have any clothes on,” Spencer said brutally. “That’s what Candy told them.”
“But at the inquest—” she began to say in a shattered kind of voice. Spencer cut her off.
“The police didn’t believe Candy. So he didn’t tell it at the inquest.”
“Oh.” It was a sigh of relief.
“Also,” Spencer went on coldly, “the police suspected you. They still do. All they need is a motive. Looks to me like they might be able to put one together now.”
She was on her feet. “I think you had both better leave my house,” she said angrily. “The sooner the better.”
“Well, did you or didn’t you?” Spencer asked calmly, not moving except to reach for his glass and find it empty.
“Did I or didn’t I what?”
“Shoot Roger?”
She was standing there staring at him. The flush had gone. Her face was white and tight and angry.
“I’m just giving you the sort of thing you’d get in court.”
“I was out. I had forgotten my keys. I had to ring to get into the house. He was dead when I got home. All that is known. What has got into you, for God’s sake?”
He took a handkerchief out and wiped his lips. “Eileen, I’ve stayed in this house twenty times. I’ve never known that front door to be locked during the daytime. I don’t say you shot him. I just asked you. And don’t tell me it was impossible. The way things worked out it was easy.”
“I shot my own husband?” she asked slowly and wonderingly.
“Assuming,” Spencer said in the same indifferent voice, “that he was your husband. You had another when you married him.”
“Thank you, Howard. Thank you very much. Roger’s last book, his swan song, is there in front of you. Take it and go. And I think you had better call the police and tell them what you think. It will be a charming ending to our
