“Naturally. They want to know why he followed me, what I was working on, why he spoke to me, why he asked me to come to his apartment and why I went. But that is only the half of it.”
She finished her port and poured herself another glass.
“How’s your asthma?” I asked.
“Bad,” she said. “Get on with your story.”
“I saw Morningstar. I told you about that over the phone. He pretended not to have the Brasher Doubloon, but admitted it had been offered to him and said he could get it. As I told you. Then you told me it had been returned to you, so that was that.”
I waited, thinking she would tell me some story about how the coin had been returned, but she just stared at me bleakly over the wine glass.
“So, as I had made a sort of arrangement with Mr. Morningstar to pay him a thousand dollars for the coin —”
“You had no authority to do anything like that,” she barked.
I nodded, agreeing with her.
“Maybe I was kidding him a little,” I said. “And I know I was kidding myself. Anyway after what you told me over the phone I tried to get in touch with him to tell him the deal was off. He’s not in the phone book except at his office. I went to his office. This was quite late. The elevator man said he was still in his office. He was lying on his back on the floor, dead. Killed by a blow on the head and shock, apparently. Old men die easily. The blow might not have been intended to kill him. I called the Receiving Hospital, but didn’t give my name.”
“That was wise of you,” she said.
“Was it? It was considerate of me, but I don’t think I’d call it wise. I want to be nice, Mrs. Murdock. You understand that in your rough way, I hope. But two murders happened in a matter of hours and both the bodies were found by me. And both the victims were connected—in some manner—with your Brasher Doubloon.”
“I don’t understand. This other, younger man also?”
“Yes. Didn’t I tell you over the phone? I thought I did.” I wrinkled my brow, thinking back. I knew I had.
She said calmly: “It’s possible. I wasn’t paying a great deal of attention to what you said. You see, the doubloon had already been returned. And you sounded a little drunk.”
“I wasn’t drunk. I might have felt a little shock, but I wasn’t drunk. You take all this very calmly.”
“What do you want me to do?”
I took a deep breath. “I’m connected with one murder already, by having found the body and reported it. I may presently be connected with another, by having found the body and not reported it. Which is much more serious for me. Even as far as it goes, I have until noon today to disclose the name of my client.”
“That,” she said, still much too calm for my taste, “would be a breach of confidence. You are not going to do that, I’m sure.”
“I wish you’d leave that damn port alone and make some effort to understand the position,” I snapped at her.
She looked vaguely surprised and pushed her glass away—about four inches away.
“This fellow Phillips,” I said, “had a license as a private detective. How did I happen to find him dead? Because he followed me and I spoke to him and he asked me to come to his apartment. And when I got there he was dead. The police know all this. They may even believe it. But they don’t believe the connection between Phillips and me is quite that much of a coincidence. They think there is a deeper connection between Phillips and me and they insist on knowing what I am doing, who I am working for. Is that clear?”
“You’ll find a way out of all that,” she said. “I expect it to cost me a little more money, of course.”
I felt myself getting pinched around the nose. My mouth felt dry. I needed air. I took another deep breath and another dive into the tub of blubber that was sitting across the room from me on the reed chaise lounge, looking as unperturbed as a bank president refusing a loan.
“I’m working for you,” I said, “now, this week, today. Next week I’ll be working for somebody else, I hope. And the week after that for still somebody else. In order to do that I have to be on reasonably good terms with the police. They don’t have to love me, but they have to be fairly sure I am not cheating on them. Assume Phillips knew nothing about the Brasher Doubloon. Assume, even, that he knew about it, but that his death had nothing to do with it. I still have to tell the cops what I know about him. And they have to question anybody they want to question. Can’t you understand that?”
“Doesn’t the law give you the right to protect a client?” she snapped. “If it doesn’t, what is the use of anyone’s hiring a detective?”
I got up and walked around my chair and sat down again. I leaned forward and took hold of my kneecaps and squeezed them until my knuckles glistened.
“The law, whatever it is, is a matter of give and take, Mrs. Murdock. Like most other things. Even if I had the legal right to stay clammed up—refuse to talk—and got away with it once, that would be the end of my business. I’d be a guy marked for trouble. One way or another they would get me. I value your business, Mrs. Murdock, but not enough to cut my throat for you and bleed in your lap.”
She reached for her glass and emptied it.
“You seem to have made a nice mess of the whole thing,” she said. “You didn’t find my daughter-in-law and you didn’t find my Brasher Doubloon. But you found a couple of dead men that I have nothing to do with and you have neatly arranged matters so that I must tell the police all my private and personal business in order to protect you from your own incompetence. That’s what I see. If I am wrong, pray correct me.”
She poured some more wine and gulped it too fast and went into a paroxysm of coughing. Her shaking hand slid the glass on to the table, slopping the wine. She threw herself forward in her seat and got purple in the face.
I jumped up and went over and landed one on her beefy back that would have shaken the City Hall.
