“He went through Junior’s bedroom, of course. He didn’t want to disturb me?.”
“… Okay. You were in the bathroom. The television was playing softly in the living room.…”
“I heard the door to the suite close again, so I thought Walter had gone down for coffee.”
“Had the television gone off?”
“No.”
“So, actually, someone could have come into the suite at that point.”
“No. At first, I thought Junior might have come back, but he couldn’t have.”
“Why not?”
“I didn’t hear them talking.”
“Would they have been talking? Necessarily?”
“Of course.…”
“So, Mrs. March, you think you heard the suite door close again, but your husband hadn’t left the suite, and you think no one entered the suite because you didn’t hear talking?”
“I guess that’s right I could be mistaken, of course. I’m trying to reconstruct.”
“Pardon, but where were you physically in the bathroom when you heard the door close the second time?”
“I was getting into the tub.…”
“… You had already run the tub?”
“Yes. While I was brushing my teeth. And all that.”
“So there must have been a period of time, while the tub was running, that you couldn’t have heard anything from the living room—not the front door, not the television, not talking?”
“I suppose not.”
“So the second time you heard the door close, when you were getting into the tub, you actually could have been hearing someone leave the suite.”
“Oh, my. That’s right Of course.”
“It would explain your son’s not having returned, your husband’s not having left, and your not hearing talking.”
“How clever you are….”
Fletch switched off the marvelous machine.
Listening, Lydia March’s eyes had gone back and forth from the slowly revolving tape reel to Fletch’s face.
Fletch said, “When I first arrived at Hendricks Plantation, and Helena Williams was telling me about the murder, I noticed she particularly mentioned what you had heard from the bathroom. I think she said something about your hearing gurgling and thinking it was the tub drain. Not precisely what you said here. But Helena could have reported what you heard from the bathroom only if you had made a point of telling her.”
Fletch rested his back against a divan pillow.
“Captain Neale wasn’t a bit clever,” he said. “He never went into the bathroom to discover what could be heard from there.
“I did.”
“Last night, when I came to visit you, you and Jake Williams were talking here in the living room. I went into the bathroom. The doors of both bedrooms to the living room were open—which gave me a much better chance to hear than you supposedly had. I closed both bathroom doors. I did not run water. I did not flush the toilet. I listened.
“Mrs. March, I could not hear you and Jake talking. You could not have heard the television, especially on low.
“I did not hear Jake leave the suite. You could not have heard the door closing—as you said you did.
“Perhaps your hearing is better than mine, but my hearing is forty years younger than yours.
“As Oscar Perlman might say, I have twenty-twenty hearing.
“Mrs. March, the closets to both bedrooms are between the bathroom and the living room. Architects do this on purpose, so you cannot hear.
“You made too much of an issue of the front door of the suite being open. You gave evidence you couldn’t have had. It was important for you to convince everyone that you heard the door close when Junior left the suite, but that it was open when you came into the living room.
“You lied.
“Why?
“Despite everything we know about your husband, how badly he treated people, his private detectives, his sense of security, you had to convince people he had opened the door to someone else, who stabbed him in the back.
“Simplicity. The simple truth is that there were two of you in a suite, with the door to the corridor closed and locked, and one of you was stabbed.
“Who did it?”
He leaned forward again, and again pressed the PLAY button on the tape recorder.
Lydia March’s voice came from the speakers:
“… There was a man in the corridor, walking away, lighting a cigar as he walked… I didn’t know who he was, from behind… I ran toward him… then I realized who he was.…”
“Mrs. March. Who was the man in the corridor?”
“Perlman. Oscar Perlman.”
“The humorist?”
“If you say so.…”
Fletch switched off the machine again.
He said, “Mrs. March, you made three mistakes in laying down potential evidence that Oscar Perlman is your husband’s murderer.
“The first isn’t very serious. Perlman says he was playing poker until five-thirty in the morning and then slept late. That he was playing poker until five-thirty in the morning can be confirmed, and I suppose Neale has done so. He could have gotten up, murdered your husband, and gone back to bed, or whatever, but it doesn’t seem likely.
“A much more serious mistake you made is in the timing of it all.
“According to your story, someone stabbed your husband in the living room. Sitting in the bathtub, you heard choking, whatever, called out, got out of the tub, grabbed a towel, went into the bedroom, saw your husband stagger in from the living room, roll off the bed, drive the scissors deeper into his back, arch up, et cetera, and die. Then you ran through the bedroom, the living room, and into the corridor.
“And you try to indicate that the man who might have stabbed your husband is—just at that point—still in the corridor, walking away?
“You lied.
“Why?
“The third mistake you made in saying Oscar Perlman was in the corridor outside the suite is most serious.
“But I’ll come back to that.”
Again, Fletch settled himself on the divan.
He said, “Unfortunately for you, the people who had the best motives and opportunity to kill your husband are all highly skilled at handling an interview. They’re all reporters. Rolly Wisham, for example, did nothing to divert suspicion from himself. Oscar Perlman didn’t even pretend he had an alibi. Lewis Graham didn’t hesitate to be open—almost indict himself. Even Crystal Faoni was quick to realize she was a possible suspect—and didn’t hesitate to admit it. Perhaps it was unconscious on their parts, but I think they all have enough experience to have realized instinctively they had all been set up as clay pigeons.
“By you. By your choice of the time and the place of the murder.
“I always look for the controlling intelligence behind anything and everything. In this case, it was yours.
“Why? Why, why, why?”
Lydia March continued sitting primly in her chair. Her head had raised slightly, and she was looking somewhat
