stoop. Maybe it is only the deeply ingrained consciousness of skirts, and the reflex response of not wanting to end up with their bellies exposed.) She went back to the chair and sat down. A cool woman. I waved the gun.
“What were you going to do with this?” I asked.
“Wait for someone to come to the door. Tell him to get lost. If he broke in, kill him. It’s my place, I’ve got a permit, and a woman has a right to protect herself.”
I listened to her hoarse voice. It was good. And she was good. She was also right. If she shot a man as she had said, she wouldn’t even have gone to trial.
“Did you kill Baron to take over the blackmail?” I said. “Or was there another reason?”
“You figure it all out.”
“The first thing I’m trying to figure is why you hired me, Agnes,” I said. “That’s your real name, right? Agnes Moore?”
Her masklike face was immobile. Then she reached for a package of cigarettes on the table beside the chair.
“That’s right,” she said. “Agnes Moore is my right name.”
23
She smoked. I sat down.
“You want to start telling me?” I said.
She reached up and pulled off her red wig. Even with the short, dark hair of Agnes Moore in front of me, I would not have recognized her behind the mask of make-up. The Agnes Moore I had met had a round, scrubbed, almost mannish face. The main change was her voice. It was still low and strong, but all the hard hoarseness was gone.
“You’re a pretty fair detective,” she said. “I figure I give a good Misty Dawn act. No one except Paul really knew Misty and Agnes were the same, and he didn’t tell you.”
“You keep them separate all the time?”
She shrugged. “I’m an actress, a good one, but I have to eat. Misty is for groceries. I don’t broadcast it.”
“You said Jonathan told you about the blackmail,” I said, “but Jonathan didn’t know about the blackmail until Sunday, and you hadn’t seen him since before Sunday. Only Baron, or someone working with him, could have told you. Then, tonight, a man told me that Misty Dawn was close to a man who knew Walter Radford very well. I put it together.”
She nodded. “I had to be sure you connected Paul and Jonathan. I wanted the killer nailed.”
“Did you?” I said. I handled the tiny pistol lightly, making sure she was aware of it. “Weiss contacted me right after I saw you. Someone had sent Weiss a message to contact me. He thought the message was from Baron, but Baron was already dead. Whoever sent that message knew that Baron was dead. I think you knew that Baron was dead when you hired me. I think you hired me to try to make sure Weiss was framed for all of it.”
“Why the hell would I do that?”
“Where were you on Monday, Agnes? Between noon and three P.M.?”
“Where…?” The mask of her face told me nothing. Her long leg began to swing. “Right here, buster. Right here.”
“Alone?”
“After Paul left, yes.”
“So you have no alibi. You knew all about the blackmail. You were very close to Jonathan Radford. Maybe you saw an easy opening. When Baron sent Weiss to collect, you followed Sammy. You went in the back way, or maybe Jonathan let you in. When Weiss arrived, you saw them fight. Jonathan went down, and Weiss ran. You grabbed the money, but Jona than saw you, so you stabbed him. You got out okay, but you were afraid the police would find you if they didn’t have a sus pect. Weiss was made to order.”
“You must be crazy!”
“Am I? Baron covered for someone, and it had to be someone he had a reason to help. You could have convinced him to help you. You could have gotten near enough to kill him easy. He would have felt safe enough with you to send Leo Zar away. I guess you just didn’t trust him, did you?”
“Swell,” she said. She laughed. Her leg was still swinging. “I double-crossed Paul, killed Jonathan and took the money, and then he framed Weiss for me? You didn’t know Paul, did you? I loved him, damn me, but he wouldn’t have gotten out of bed to save me or anyone who double-crossed him. He had his damned little Carla anyway. He’d have tried to get the money and then turned me in instead of Weiss. Paul wouldn’t have helped anyone unless there was something in it for him.”
“All right,” I said. “I’m a reasonable man. You didn’t kill Jonathan; Baron did. You knew he did. He…”
“Paul didn’t kill him!” she broke in. “Paul didn’t kill anyone!”
I ignored her. “He had his frame on Weiss, but maybe he was afraid of you, too. You just told me the kind of man Baron was; I believe you. If you knew he’d killed Jonathan, you’d have been afraid of him. So you killed him. Maybe he tried to use his knife on you to silence you, and you killed in self-defense. I’d believe that. After you killed him, you saw that Weiss could be framed for that, too. Baron had already planted the $25,000 on Weiss with that bet. So you got to me, told me about the blackmail in case I didn’t know, and sent me out knowing that as soon as I heard Weiss’s story I’d go looking for Baron. Your only risk was that someone would find Baron too soon, but there wasn’t much chance of that. This is your apartment.”
“Did you dream all this,” she said, “or do you have some proof?”
“It was all smooth,” I said, “except for Leo Zar. You didn’t fool Leo, so you hired a couple of men to take care of him. They didn’t get to him soon enough. He told me who killed Baron. He said Baron’s wife killed Baron.” I watched her as her black-mesh leg stopped swinging. “You were Baron’s wife, weren’t you, Agnes?”
“No,” she said, and she leaned toward me. “Damn you, no! Paul wasn’t married. I tried, at the beginning, but he laughed at me.”
“Tell it straight, Agnes. The police will find out now.”
“Paul didn’t have a wife! Don’t you think I’d know?”
She was a smart woman, tough and intelligent. She would know that she could not hide a marriage from the police once they knew what names to look for. It might take time, but they had the tools to track down a marriage. I sensed that she was telling the truth.
“How long were you with Baron?” I asked.
“Almost two years, off and on. Paul was never a one-woman man.”
“And he never mentioned a wife?”
“No. He had a partner before I met him. A regular girl he worked with, but I didn’t know her.” Her voice grew bitter. “I don’t think I met her. He had so many women. Maybe I met her.”
“Then what did Leo Zar mean?”
“How do I know? Ask Leo.”
“He’s dead,” I said. “So is Carla Devine.”
She didn’t cry out or shiver. She just seemed to shrink. Her bold, hard body became smaller, curled inward.
“What’s happening?” she said. “A lousy little blackmail, that was all it was.”
“It got bigger,” I said. “Maybe you better tell me your side.”
Her cigarette still burned in the ashtray. She lighted another without noticing. A cold blast blew into the room through the window I had not closed. I got up and closed it. She did not move. When I sat down again, she began to talk:
“When I met Jonathan, I saw right away that I could get him. He wanted me, he was rich, he didn’t care what I was. Paul thought it was a great idea. Paul was like that; he got a kick out of knowing that other men had to pay for a girl he got by snapping his fingers. So I took up with the old man. He was a pretty good old man, I’ll give him that. He treated me well. If I hadn’t been hung up on Paul, maybe I would have treated him better. I wish I had. None of this would have happened. Paul would be alive.”
