“I bet I know your motto,” I said.
“Eternal vigilance—” he said.
“I know,” I said. “I know. Who is the head of the committee?”
“I am chairman.”
“Gee, and still so humble,” I said.
“Spenser, I do not find you funny,” he said.
“Puts you in excellent company,” I said. “Could you account for your movements since Monday night at nine o’clock if someone asked you?”
“Of course I could. I resent being asked.”
“Go ahead,” I said.
“Go ahead what?”
“Go ahead and account for your movements since nine o’clock Monday night.”
“I certainly will not. I have no obligation to tell you anything.”
“We already did this once, Lawrence. Tell me, tell Belson—I don’t care.”
“I have absolutely nothing to hide.”
“Funny how I knew you’d say that. Too bad to waste it on me though. It’ll dazzle the cops.”
“Well, I don’t,” he said. “I don’t have anything to hide. I was at a committee meeting from seven thirty Monday night until eleven fifteen. Then I came straight home to bed.”
“Anybody see you come home?”
“My mother, several of the servants.”
“And the next day?”
“I was at Old Colony Trust at nine fifteen, I left there at eleven, played racquetball at the club, then lunched at the club. I returned home after lunch, arrived here at three fifteen. I read until dinner. After dinner—”
“Okay, enough. I’ll check on all of this, of course. Who’d you play racquetball with?”
“I simply will not involve my friends in this. I will not have you badgering and insulting them.”
I let that go. He’d fight that one. He didn’t want his friends at the club to know he was being investigated, and a guy like English will dig in to protect his reputation. Besides I could check it easily. The club and the committee, too.
“Badger?” I said. “Insult? Lawrence, how unkind. I am clearly not of your social class, but I am not without grace.”
“Are you through?”
“I am for now,” I said. “I will authenticate your—if you’ll pardon the expression—alibi, and I may look further into your affairs. If the alibi checks, I’ll still keep you in mind, however. You didn’t have to do it, to have it done, or to know who did it.”
“I shall sue you if you continue to bother me,” English said.
“And if you are involved in any way in anything that happened to Rachel Wallace,” I said, “I will come back and put you in the hospital.”
English narrowed his eyes a little. “Are you threatening me?” he said.
“That’s exactly it, Lawrence,” I said. “That is exactly what I am doing. I am threatening you.”
English looked at me with his eyes narrowed for a minute, and then he said, “You’d better leave.”
“Okay by me,” I said, “but remember what I told you. If you are holding out on me, I’ll find out, and I’ll come back. If you know something and don’t tell me, I will find out, and I will hurt you.”
He stood and opened the study door.
“A man in my position has resources, Spenser.” He was still squinting at me. I realized that was his tough look.
“Not enough,” I said, and walked off down the hall and out the front door. The snow had stopped. Around back, a Plymouth sedan was parked next to my car. When I walked over to it, the window rolled down and Belson looked out at me.
“Thought this was your heap,” he said. “Learn anything?”
I laughed. “I just got through threatening English with you,” I said, “so he’d talk to me. Now here you are, and he could just as well not have talked to me.”
“Get in,” Belson said. “We’ll compare notes.”
I got in the back seat. Belson was in the passenger seat. A cop I didn’t know sat behind the wheel. Belson didn’t introduce us.
“How’d you get here?” I said.
“You told Quirk about the library scene,” Belson said, “and we questioned Linda Smith along with everybody else and she mentioned it to me. I had it on my list when Quirk mentioned it to me. So we called the Belmont Police and found ourselves about an hour behind you. What you get?”
