“You’ve been considering Bart Connors from the very beginning. You’ve been after him so, the man has my sympathy.”
“Apparently.” Fletch was hanging onto his index finger. “Six months ago, Bart Connors had a sexual- psychological shock. His wife left him for a woman. Mrs. Sawyer said he then became sexually very active. He is known to have brought girls to his apartment. We thought he had gone to Italy on Sunday. He did not leave Boston until nine-thirty Tuesday night, and then he flew through Montreal, a sort of unusual thing to do. Just prior to the murder, Joan Winslow said she saw him in a pub two blocks away with a girl she has identified as Ruth Fryer.”
“She’s an unreliable witness. Any defense attorney would make hash other in minutes.”
“Flynn, why isn’t Bart Connors the murderer?”
“I don’t know.”
“We know he delayed his departure from Boston because he was trying to talk a girl into going to Italy with him—a girl who ultimately refused.”
“Well, I have a prejudice against him. He’s a Boston lawyer, you know, an important firm…”
“All of which just meant he’s smart enough to lay the crime off on someone else.”
“I don’t know why he’d need to. I don’t know why he wouldn’t have taken the body and dumped it in some alley.”
“He had a plane to catch. He was well-known in the neighborhood. It was still early evening. He knew I’d be arriving.”
“All good reasons. But Ruth Fryer had not had sexual intercourse.”
“That’s it, Flynn. Her rejecting him, after his experience with his wife, may have sent him up the wall.”
“May have.”
“Frankly, Flynn, I don’t think you’ve paid enough attention to Bart Connors as a suspect.”
“Grover, pay more attention to Bart Connors as a suspect.”
“Incidentally, something else you don’t know is that Ruth Fryer’s boyfriend, whose name is Clay Robinson, flew up from Washington Tuesday afternoon to spend a few days with her.”
“Did he? Grover, our incompetence is becoming marked.”
“Presuming Ruth Fryer knew Bart Connors, that he was in Italy, why wouldn’t she have taken Clay Robinson to use Bart’s apartment?”
“Why would she, when there are hotels?”
“It’s a nice place.”
“Wouldn’t she have had to explain to her boyfriend how it was she had access to such an apartment?”
“I suppose so.”
“She had no key we know of, Mister Fletcher. Your tagged luggage was in the hall…”
“Okay. Now we come to Joan Winslow.”
“My god, Grover, it’s like listening to one of those Harvard-Radcliffe professors—such a pompous lecture, we’re getting.”
“Flynn, I’m tired of being a murder suspect.”
“I’d say you’ve got pretty good evidence those paintings are in Texas.” Flynn’s voice was barely audible across the desk. “You want to get out of here.”
“Inspector, I didn’t catch that,” Grover said.
“You weren’t meant to. Go on, Mister Fletcher.”
“Joan Window has a key to the apartment. She was in love with Bart Connors. Passionately. He had rejected her quite thoroughly. She hated, absolutely hated the young girls he had been bringing to his apartment.”
“So how would that work in time and space?”,
“I don’t know. Joan Winslow heard someone in Bart’s apartment, knew he was in Italy, went over to investigate found Ruth Fryer naked, thinking she was waiting for Bart; Joan went into a drunken rage and slugged her with the bottle.”
“Who put the other whiskey bottles away? I mean, cleaned off the whole liquor bar?”
“Joan Winslow did. She knew the apartment. I guess she knew I was coming in. Or, she saw the suitcases and knew I was going to return. Or, she simply wanted to frame Bart Connors.”
“That’s a possibility.”
“Joan Winslow has made an even greater effort than I have to blame Bart Connors. She identified Ruth Fryer as being the girl she saw in the pub with him.”
“When do we get to consider all the evidence against you? Grover’s getting anxious over there.”
“I think you’ve done enough of that. You’ve considered me such a prime suspect, you’ve done little else.”
“Now, what haven’t we done?”
“I’ll tell you what you haven’t done. You didn’t find Ruth Fryer’s motel key.”
“By the way, you never gave it to me.”
“You didn’t need it. You didn’t know Joan Winslow has a key to Bart Connors’ apartment”.
“That was thick of us. Sheer inexperience on my part.”
“You didn’t know Ruth Fryer’s boyfriend, Clay Robinson, was in Boston Tuesday afternoon.”
“How were we to know that?”
“You haven’t talked with Bart Connors.”
“Oh. Him again. You should like a Christmas phonograph—reindeer and snowflakes and bright shining stars over and over again.”
“And the most significant thing of all I don’t even think you’ve thought of doing.”
“We’ve had the City Councilperson’s murder…”
“You’re not going to send me to prison, Flynn, because you’re distracted.”
“Such a scolding I’m getting. You sound like Grover. A more experienced policeman might resent it.”
“Sorry, Flynn, but I want to get moving.”.
“You’ve mentioned it!”
“Lucy Connors,” said Fletch.
“Ah, yes. Lucy Connors.”
“She has a key to the apartment.”
“Has she? Have you talked with her?”
“Yes.”
“Very enterprising of you. When could that have been? Does she live in Brookline?”
“Yes.”
“Ah. You went there Sunday morning, before paying your visit to me.”
“Flynn, Lucy Connors flew into Boston from Chicago Tuesday afternoon on Trans World Airlines.”
“My god.”
“Furthermore, she made an excuse to her roommate for being late. She was late by two or three hours.”
“Very enterprising of you, Mister Fletcher. Very enterprising, indeed.”
“She as a history of violence, which she admits. She used to beat up her husband—send him to the office with welts. She and her girlfriend still play with sexual violence.”
“You must have been a very good investigative reporter, Mister Fletcher, to know what two people do in bed.”
“Lucy Connors flies into Boston. Her eye is taken by Ground Hostess Ruth Fryer. She picks her up, maybe with some story about her boutique. Ruth is young and innocent, and never dreams this older woman has sexual designs on her. They go to Ruth’s hotel, where she changes into a pretty dress, because, after all, this older woman, her new friend, has been in Chicago buying for her boutique. She doesn’t wait for Clay Robinson, because she doesn’t know he’s coming. Ruth is an airline stewardess, bored in a city she doesn’t know, about to get married in a month or two; another girl asks her to join her for drinks, a dinner, the evening. Why shouldn’t she go? She feels perfectly safe.”
“We have to think in these terms, don’t we?” said Flynn.
“A man and a woman can check into a hotel together, but eyebrows still rise at two women-doing so.”
“I expect so.”
