'I have assumed she didn't.'
'I know you have. I haven't. There has been no sign whatever that Vaughn ever had any contact with anyone involved, except the Brookes. Who else could he possibly have been going to ask a few questions?'
'I don't know. But as for Mrs. Brooke, in addition to the lack of acceptable motive, she couldn't have made that telephone call, mimicking Miss Brooke, unless she knew of the eight-o'clock rendezvous, and that's unlikely; and if she didn't make the call, who did? Possibly, of course, Miss Brooke; but by no means certainly; I still question it. But the chief point about Mrs. Brooke: returning home, she told Mr. Vaughn that she had seen Mr. Whipple entering the building. Consider it. She is in the apartment, having wiped her fingerprints from the club with which she has just killed her sister-in-law; any idiot would do that. She scoots; any idiot would do that too. Outside, on the street, does she stand there until she sees Mr. Whipple arrive and enter? Nonsense. Then does she catch a glimpse of him, arriving, as she flees? Possibly; but if so, would she tell Mr. Vaughn that she saw him arrive? I don't believe it.'
I looked at it for five seconds. 'What else?'
'Nothing ponderable.'
'Okay.' I stood up. 'I'm taking a leave of absence without pay. Two hours or two days, I don't know.'
He nodded. 'With luck it will be two hours. Your time would be better spent on Mr. Vaughn, even with Mr. Cramer's legion underfoot.' He reached for the little stack of mail.
I blew.
I never, in these reports, skimp any step that counts, forward or backward. If I score a point, or if I get my nose pushed in, I like to cover it. But it would be a waste of time and space to tell you, for instance, how the Park Avenue hallman reacted to the fact that this time I could talk, or how Dolly Brooke took the news, news to her, that Peter Vaughn was dead. What matters is that it wasn't a step in either direction, except for me personally, since Wolfe had already crossed her off. In less than two hours I got the kind of alibi you do get sometimes, the kind you file under finished business. At seven-forty Wednesday evening Kenneth and Dolly Brooke had sat down to dinner at the table of another couple in the same apartment house; a little before nine two other couples had joined them for an evening of bridge; and they had quit around one o'clock. I checked it with all three of the women, two in person and one on the phone, and with two of the men. When I got back to the old brownstone, Wolfe was in the dining room, halfway through lunch, and one glance at my face told him how it stood. I took my seat, and Fritz came, and I helped myself to a healthy portion of broiled shad that had been marinated in oil and lemon juice seasoned with bay leaf, thyme, and oregano, and three ladles of pureed sorrel. I took only three ladles because at bedtime I would go to the kitchen, heat the leftover sorrel, spread it on a couple of slices of Fritz's bread, and sprinkle it with nutmeg. Serve with a glass of milk. Have a spoon handy to salvage the puree that dribbles onto the plate when you bite.
When we went to the office neither of us mentioned Dolly Brooke. I merely said, as I sat, 'I'll deduct twenty-two dollars for the two hours.'
He grunted. 'I prefer not to share the cost of this performance. I'm paying a debt.' He flipped a hand to dismiss it. 'Presumably Mr. Vaughn telephoned from his home.'
'Only presumably. When I rang his home about half an hour later I was told he had just gone out, by a maid, on a guess.'
'Where does he live?'
'East Seventy-seventh Street, between Fifth and Madison. Presumably with his parents; it's listed as Mrs. Samuel Vaughn.'
'We need to know his movements yesterday, both before and after he telephoned.'
'We sure do.'
'How do you propose to proceed?'
'Ask people questions. Routine. If you want to speed it up at a price, Saul and Fred and Orrie could help. One advantage, everybody would have the answers ready because they would already have told the cops.'
He growled. 'Intolerable.'
'Yes, sir. The dust would make it harder. It might be better if we just sat here and tried to guess who, or at least what kind of who, Vaughn was going to ask questions of. I had a try at it in the taxi on the way home.'
'And?'
'The shape he was in when he left here Tuesday morning, he must have gone straight home and flopped. He was surely flat by one o'clock. He told me on the phone he had slept seventeen hours, and that has him awake at six a.m., so he had all day, and unquestionably he had seen somebody before he phoned me. He said he might have something important to tell me a little later. He wouldn't have said that, especially the 'important,' if he merely had some wild idea. He was going to follow up something he had seen or heard. Satisfactory?'
'Yes, but you haven't moved.'
'I move now. What or who is the point. What would be eating him when he caught up on sleep? He had got Dolly Brooke off his conscience, and now two questions were nagging him: who killed Susan, and had she been emotionally involved-his words-with Dunbar Whipple, or hadn't she? As for who killed her, he thought it possible, maybe probable, that Dolly Brooke had, but that was merely an unanswered question that other people were working on. It was the second question that really hurt, and he wanted to know.'
I gestured. 'All right, where would he go? In a way he was a simple, direct kind of guy, and he might have gone straight to Dunbar Whipple, but he was in the can. There was no point in going to Dolly Brooke; he had heard all she had to say, he knew she didn't really know, whether she had killed Susan or not. There were only two possibilities, as far as he knew: Whipple's father and mother, or the people at the ROCC. That's where he went. To Paul Whipple, or the ROCC, or both. I suggest that you phone Whipple, and if you get a no, I go to the ROCC and ask Maud Jordan what time Peter Vaughn got there yesterday.'
