someone else.”
“But you’re not going to.”
“I’m inclining very much that way.”
“Did you ever find that girl who gave me directions In that square Tuesday night? The square with the Citgo sign?”
“Of course not. We haven’t even looked. We’d have to interview the entire female population at Boston University, and that still wouldn’t cover all the young women who might be in Keno Square at that time of night. There are night clubs there.”
“Oh.”
“It’s no good, lad. The evidence is piled up. I doubt we’ll ever get more.”
“I hope not.”
“It’s not precisely warm of me to ask you to confess by telephone, but there is this other murder.”
“Will you stop giving the evidence you have to the newspapers? You’re convicting me.”
“Ach, that. Well, that puts as much pressure on me as it does on you.”
“Not quite, Inspector. Not quite.”
“Well, I’ll leave it alone for a while. Give you time to think. Get a lawyer. I have a natural instinct to not do precisely what Grover tells me to do. You might even get a psychiatrist.”
“Why a psychiatrist?”
“It’s your seeming innocence that puzzles me. I sincerely believe you think you didn’t kill Ruth Fryer. The evidence says you did.”
“You mean you think I blacked it out.”
“It’s been known to happen. The human mind plays amazing tricks. Or am I doing the wrong thing in giving you a line of legal defense?”
“I guess anything’s possible.”
“The thing is, Mister Fletcher, what I’m saying is, you have to keep an open mind to the evidence. Even you. You might start to begin to believe the evidence. You see, we have to believe the evidence.”
“There’s a lot of evidence.”
“I shouldn’t be doing this on the phone. But there’s this other body.”
“I understand.”
“I suppose we could work a thing whereby the appoints a psychiatrist for you…”
“Not yet, Flynn.”
“Do you agree this interpretation of the crime and its solution is a possibility?”
“Yes. Of course.”
“Good lad.”
“But it didn’t happen.”
“I’m sure you don’t think so.”
“I know so.”
“That, too. Well, that’s my best guess at the moment. Got to get back to my chubby City Councilperson.”
“Inspector?”
“Yes?”
“I’m about to go to the Ritz-Carlton.”
“Yes?”
“Just warning you. You’d better have your men keep a pretty sharp eye on the side door this time.”
“They. will, Mister Fletcher. They will.”
Fifteen
Fletch walked the “eighteen, twenty miles” to the Ritz-Carlton, which was around a corner and up a few blocks.
He hung around the lobby, looking at the books on the newsstand, until his watch said six-thirty-five.
Then he went into the bar.
Countess Sylvia de Grassi was receiving considerable attention from the waiters. Her drink was finished, but one was dusting the clean table, another was bringing her a fresh plate of olive hors d’oeuvres, a third was standing by, admiring her with big eyes.
Sylvia, near forty, had brightly tousled bleached hair, magnificent facial features, smooth skin, and apparently the deepest cleavage ever spotted in Boston. Her dress was cut not to cover her breasts but to suggest the considerable structural support needed. Clearly there was nothing holding them down. They preceded her like an offering.
“Ah, Sylvia. Nice trip?”
He kissed her cheek as a socially acceptable alternative.
“Sorry to be a little late.” All three waiters held his chair. “Mrs. Sawyer got her eyelashes caught in the freezer door.”
“What’s this, Mrs. Sawyer—freezer door?”
Sylvia’s big brown eyes were puckered with impatient suspicion.
“Just the best excuse I’ve heard all day.”
“Now, Flesh, I am not going to have any of your double-talk in English. I want the truth.”
“Absolutely. What are you drinking?”
“Campari in soda.”
“Still watching your figure, uh? Might as well. Everyone else is.” He said to all the waiters—as he could get the eye of none of them—“A Campari and soda and a Bath Towel. You don’t have a Bath Towel? Then I’ll just have a Chivas and water. Now, Sylvia, you were saying you were about to tell the truth. Why are you in Boston?”
“I come to Boston to stop you. You and Angela. I know you conspire against me. You plan to rob my paintings.”
“Nonsense, dear lady. What makes you think a thing like that?”
“Because in Angela’s room I found your notes. Your address, 152 Beacon Street, Boston. Your telephone number. Also a list of the paintings.”
“I see. From that you reasonably concluded I came to Boston to find the paintings.”
“I know you did.”
“And you followed me.”
“I come ahead of you. I fly Rome, New York, then Boston. I wanted to be waiting when you got off the airplane in Boston. I wanted you to run right into me.”
“What fun. What held you up?”
“I missed the connection in New York.”
“You mean, you were here in Boston on Tuesday?”
“I was. Five o’clock I arrived Boston.”
“My, my. And all that time I thought I knew no one in Boston. What did you do then?”
“I came here to the hotel. I call you. No answer.”
“I went out to dinner.”
“I call you next day, yesterday, leave a message. You never call back.”
“Okay, so you killed Ruth Fryer.
“What you say? I kill no one.”
She retracted her supercarriage while the waiter served her drink.
“What’s this talk of kill?”
Fletch ignored the drink in front of him.
“Sylvia, I don’t have the paintings. I’ve never seen the paintings. I don’t know where the paintings are. I’m not even sure I’ve got the story about the paintings straight.”
“Then why are you in Boston with a list of the paintings? Tell me that.”
