Freddie said, “Who is Joseph Molinaro?”
Captain Neale said, “This is the perfect day for a fruit salad. Don’t you think?”
“In a way,” Fletch said, quietly, “everyone here is a bastard of Walter March. Or has been treated like one.”
Neale dropped his fork, but caught it before it went into his lap.
Crystal said brightly, as if introducing a new topic, “Say, who is this Joseph Molinaro, anyway?”
Neale, applying himself to his lunch, seemingly unperturbed, said, “There is no way I can keep any of you beyond tomorrow morning, or tonight, or whenever.”
“I understand I’m on the six-forty-five flight out of here.” Fletch looked at Freddie. “Me and my shadow. I’m catching a nine o’clock from Washington to London.”
She did not look at him.
Fletch said to Neale, “I don’t see how you could have accomplished very much, in just a couple of days. Under the circumstances.”
“We’ve accomplished more than you think,” Neale said.
“What have you accomplished?” Crystal asked like a sledgehammer.
To Neale’s silence, Fletch said, “Captain Neale has narrowed it down to two or three people. Or he wouldn’t be letting the rest of us go.”
Neale was paying more attention to the remainder of his salad than Crystal would do after trekking across a full golf course.
Fletch hitched himself forward in the chair and addressed himself to Crystal, speaking slowly. “The key,” he said, “is that Walter March was murdered—stabbed in the back with a pair of scissors—shortly before eight o’clock Monday morning, in the sitting room of his suite.”
Crystal stared at him dumbly.
“People lose sight of the simplicities,” Fletch said.
Under the table, Freddie kicked him hard, on the shin.
Fletch said, “Ow.”
“I just felt like doing that,” she said.
“Damnit” He rubbed his shin. “Are you trying to tell me I don’t get along well with everybody?”
“Something like that.”
“Well, you’re wrong,” Fletch said. “I do.”
The waiter was bringing chocolate cake for dessert.
“Oh, yum!” said Crystal. “Who cares about death and perdition as long as there’s chocolate cake?”
“Captain Neale does,” said Fletch.
“No,” said Neale. “I care about chocolate cake.”
“There is evidence,” Fletch said, the pain in his shin having abated, “that Walter March was expecting someone—someone he knew. He was expecting someone to call upon him in his suite at eight o’clock or shortly before.” Fletch had a forkful of the cake. “Someone to whom he would have opened the door.”
Freddie was continuing to look disgusted, but she was listening carefully.
Neale appeared to be paying no attention whatsoever.
Fletch asked him, mildly, “Who was it?”
“Good cake,” Neale said.
Fletch said, “Was it Oscar Perlman?”
Neale didn’t need to answer.
He looked at Fletch, both alarm and despair in his eyes.
“And who was it who told you Walter March was expecting Oscar Perlman?” Fletch asked. “Junior?”
Neale’s throat was dry from the cake. “Junior?”
“Walter March, Junior,” Fletch said.
“Jesus!” Neale’s eyes went from one to the other of them, desperately. “Don’t you print this. None of you. I didn’t say a word. If one of you prints.…”
“Don’t worry.” Fletch put his napkin on the table, and stood up. “Crystal and I are unemployed. And Freddie Arbuthnot,” he said, “doesn’t work for
Thirty-three
1:30 P.M.
MY EIGHT TERMS IN THE WHITE HOUSE
Address by Leona Hatch
Fletch said, “Mrs. March, I’ve been trying to understand why you murdered your husband.”
Sitting in a chair across the coffee table from him in Suite 12, her expression changed little. Perhaps her eyes grew a little wider.
“And,” Fletch said, “I think I do understand.”
He had appeared at her door, carrying the marvelous machine.
She had answered the door, still dressed in black, having returned from the memorial service shortly before. Near the door was a luncheon tray waiting to be taken away.
At first, she looked at him in surprise, as it was an unseemly time to call. Then she obviously remembered he had promised they would talk again about his working for March Newspapers. And the suitcase in his hand suggested he was about to leave.
He said nothing.
Sitting on the divan, he placed the marvelous machine flat on the coffee table.
Now he was opening it.
“Statistically, of course,” he said, “in the case of a domestic murder—and this is a domestic murder—when a husband or wife is murdered, chances of the spouse being the murderer are something over seventy percent.”
Perhaps her eyes widened again when she saw that what was in the suitcase was a tape recorder.
“Which is why,” Fletch said, “you chose to murder your husband here at the convention, where you knew your husband would be surrounded by people who had reason to hate him to the point of murder.”
Her back was straight Her hands were folded in her lap.
“Listen to this.”
Fletch started the tape recorder.
It was the tape of Lydia March being questioned by Captain Neale, edited:
“At what time did you wake up, Mrs. March?”
“I’m not sure. Seven-fifteen? Seven-twenty? I heard the door to the suite close.”
“That was me, Mister Neale,” Junior said. “I went down to the lobby to get the newspapers.”
“Walter had left his bed. It’s always been a thing with him to be up a little earlier than I. A masculine thing. I heard him moving around the bathroom. I lay in bed a little while, a few minutes, really, waiting for him to be done.”
“The bathroom door was closed?”
“Yes. In a moment I heard the television here in the living room go on, softly—one of those morning news and features network shows Walter always hated so much—so I got up and went into the bathroom.”
“Excuse me. How did your husband get from the bathroom to the living room without coming back through your bedroom?”
