collar open, and without a tie. He was very calm as he turned to look at me, the rimless glasses glinting faintly against the smooth pink coloring of his flesh.
“You go right ahead with whatever you were doing,” he said in that mild voice. “I just wanted to talk with you for a few minutes. If you could spare the time.”
Miraglia was a man who would carefully finish his sentences.
“Sit down,” I told him. “Just getting ready to head for the store. But I’m in no hurry. That place is running me ragged lately.”
“I’ll bet.”
He went over and sat down on the couch in front of the windows at the front of the apartment. He looked extremely clean, and not a hair of his black mop was out of place. I came over and took a chair across from the couch.
The silence of the apartment was even more pronounced.
He sat there. He shook his head mildly.
He said, “I suppose you know why I’m here?”
“Can’t say that I do.”
He didn’t speak for a minute. He would come to the point in his own good time. And when I looked at him, all I could see were the bright opaque circles of the lenses of his glasses where they caught the light from across the room.
“Well,” he said. “You must have read about it in the papers.”
“I’ll bet you mean Spondell. That old guy?”
“Yes,” he said. “That’s who I mean.”
“I read about it, the other day. Died.” I leaned forward. “Doc,” I said. “I couldn’t figure why all the bother about that stuff they had me put in the house. Frankly, he looked pretty bad to me. I figured it would be a short time.”
“Yes.”
I leaned back. I had taken the wrong tack. I was so nervous it was all I could do to keep from jumping up and pacing the room. I had to sit here and talk with him, just as long as he felt like talking.
I put one elbow on the chair arm, and pointed a finger at Miraglia. Sometimes you could put them on the defensive that way, at least I’d done it to customers. “You know?” I said. “I couldn’t help but feel sorry for that poor kid—Miss Angela. It must have been rough on her.”
“His dying?”
“No. Taking care of him. I mean, young as she is, she should be out with kids her own age.”
“It was rough.”
I was blabbering. I should be sitting here listening to him tell me why he was here, not telling him things.
He faintly cleared his throat, looked around the room, then focused those damned lenses on me again. I wished I could see his eyes.
“I was rather attached to Victor,” Miraglia said. “He was just a patient, but sometimes patients become good friends. It was that way in this case. He was an arrogant old fool, who didn’t really believe he would die. I liked him.”
He paused and I didn’t speak.
He said, “Victor shouldn’t have died, Mr. Ruxton.”
“Shouldn’t have died?”
“He wasn’t due. Not really.” He shrugged, then said, “Of course, he did die. I even suppose I was afraid he might die. But it wasn’t entirely natural, his dying. It was really an accident, beyond his control.”
“How’s that?”
He didn’t speak for a moment. He sat there, rubbed the side of his jaw with the heel of his hand, and shook his head.
“That intercom system,” he said. “It went on the blink. Shirley was outside the house when it all happened. She didn’t hear him call. A terrible thing—what must have gone on in that bedroom.”
I made a deep frown and held it. Here it was. “You must be mistaken,” I said. “That intercom system was working fine.”
“Now, look, Mr. Ruxton. Don’t get on the defensive. I’m not accusing you of anything.”
Everything would have been all right, maybe, if he hadn’t used that word. “Accusing.” He was a corker, quick to work his psychological gimmicks. I hadn’t had a chance to be on the defensive.
“I don’t get you,” I said. “I don’t get you at all.”
“I think you do.”
“I don’t.”
“Nobody else is here, Mr. Ruxton.” He reassured himself of that by glancing quickly around the room. “Just you and me. It doesn’t matter what you tell me. We both know how a careless soldering job can ground out a circuit if it’s in an especially vital part, don’t we? And since you’re in the business, you must have realized that you made an extremely inadequate job of soldering that condenser that went out.”
I waited a second to make it look good. “So, that’s it,” I said.
“That’s it. I checked the units myself. I located the spot. I used to fool around with electronics myself. It interests me.” He lifted one hand and motioned with it, then laid it carefully on the couch beside him, as if it were a piece of fragile glassware. “It was an accident, of course—in a manner of speaking.”
“What are you getting at?”
“You knew that was a sloppy soldering job, didn’t you?”
“It worked. I don’t have time to...”
He interrupted brightly. “You don’t have time.” His voice became mild again. “It’s a shame you don’t have time, Ruxton. If you’d had time, that ‘old guy’ would have been alive right now.”
“Boy, you’re hot, you are.”
“I said I’m not accusing you of anything. It’s just the way it is, and I wanted you to know I knew.”
“All right. So we both know.”
“And nobody else knows. There’s certainly no need for them knowing, is there.”
I didn’t say anything at all to that. I wanted to get up and throw him out on his ear. I couldn’t do that, either. He had me so far up a tree I couldn’t see the ground for the branches.
On the other hand, it was out, and I had expected this. It had worked all right. Miraglia knew why Spondell had died, and he knew it was my fault. The only thing was, I had figured to be sad about it. How could I be sad when he had me so damned irked I could wring his throat? And something else I didn’t like was his too obvious deep concern over the thing.
“All right,” I said. “If you look at it that way, I guess maybe it was my fault.”
“Sorry I had to bring the news.”
“Then why did you bring it? Just to cheer up my day?”
He said, “I want you to know I thought an awful lot of Victor. We had become very good friends. I even had a notion I might be able to get him back on his feet. I couldn’t clear him up entirely, but I could have maybe added a couple more years to his life. That’s why I’ve come to you, to tell you what you’ve done.”
“Seems to me you’re kind of over-ready to blame somebody.”
“I told you, I thought a lot of him.”
“You said all that. What’s the matter? He leave you part of his loot? That it? I’d think you’d be happier with him gone, if that’s the case.”
He didn’t speak. Right away I wished I hadn’t said that. The glasses gleamed and glinted, and his face had paled.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m sorry I said that. It just jumped out. I didn’t mean it. Guess I’m taking it out on myself. I feel bad about what’s happened, what you’ve told me. I see now, it was my fault—in a way.”
He still said nothing.
I said, “The fact is, I kind of liked the old guy myself. He always called me a son of a bitch.”
Miraglia didn’t change expression and he did not speak.
“Well,” I said. “There’s nothing anybody can do now.”
