The worst part was over now, and it was safe for me to speak.
“You were very lucky to get away like that.” I pointed out.
“Yes. I started out immediately for the police, but of course I never got there. As soon as I was calm enough to think properly, I could foresee that if I did that, my future in Monkton City was finished. I would always be the woman who went to vice parties, no matter what the circumstances were.”
“Not at all,” I objected. “Your name would never have been mentioned at any trial. You would have been Mrs. X.”
I didn’t sound very convincing though, for the reason that I didn’t believe it myself. Even if the decent newspapers decided to give her a break, there’d be some dirt-hunting hack who’d come up with a picture of the “lovely Mrs. X, mysterious orgy witness,” and after that Eve Prince might as well leave town.
“I’m sure you don’t have any more faith in that than I,” she reproved. “Anyway, I didn’t report it. Next morning I made the acquaintance of this man Brookman. He telephoned the house and told me he was going to call to discuss the party the previous night. I need hardly describe my feelings while I waited for him. I was afraid to have him in the house, so I waited out front. When he came, he had some photographs. They were all of me, and they were all very clear. He said he’d been of great service to me, because the man who took the pictures wanted five hundred dollars for them. Brookman had persuaded him to accept two hundred. I paid of course.”
“And how often did he turn up after that?”
“Every two weeks. It’s been going on almost three months now.”
Three months of blackmail at that cost would probably have begun to put a real strain on her resources, I would guess.
“And now he’s dead,” I mused. “You realize, Mrs. Prince, that I have to take a special interest in you now?”
She looked surprised.
“I don’t see why,” she objected. “I’ve told you the whole thing.”
“What you have told me,” I explained, “Is a good sound reason for wanting Brookman dead. He is dead, and it would have been an entirely understandable thing if you’d been the one to kill him.”
“Oh.”
She made a tight little sound and bit anxiously at her knuckles.
“Mr. Preston, I had nothing to do with it. When I read the story in the newspaper I could hardly believe it. I went to the mortuary to see for myself whether it was the right man.”
And that was that, so far as she could see. The world is not that easy to live in.
“Where were you last night?”
“I was here at home,” she said icily. “And, oh yes, I can prove it. My son had a couple of his friends in here and they were playing records until quite late.”
“That’s very good news Mrs. Prince. And I’m very interested in hearing about Brookman’s blackmail activities. If he had any other—er—victims. I ought to have some very profitable enquiries to make. I think a good place to start would be wherever this phoney piano recital was held.”
I raised my voice at the end to make it a question. She was alarmed at once.
“But I don’t want any more involvement,” she protested. “It was a filthy incident, a nasty ugly hour in my life that I just want to forget, I won’t testify, you know.”
She said that bit triumphantly as though it were a trump card.
“Nobody said anything about testimony,” I pointed out wearily.
“All I want is to contact these people who obviously-must have known Brookman. This is a very elusive guy so far as his private life is concerned. No family, no friends I can trace. All I’m asking is the address. Your name won’t be mentioned.”
“If I thought I could rely on that——” she hesitated.
“You can,” I promised.
“Very well. It’s a house out at Beach End. I’ve forgotten the name of the house, but it belongs to a man named Hugo Somerset.”
I should have been able to guess that.
“You know this Somerset?”
“No. But he was there, acting as a combined host and master of ceremonies.”
I paused before asking the next question. But it had to be asked.
“Eer, this Hugo Somerset. It wasn’t him who er— er——”
She shook her head hard.
“No, it wasn’t him. He was the one who put a stop to it.”
One of the Santa Claus Somersets, I reflected.
“Well, I guess I can get the address easily enough. Thank you, Mrs. Prince. I’m sorry you’ve been bothered about all this, and I can understand the way you feel. There’s just one last thing.”
She looked up at me as I stood, and worry or not on her face, she was a very attractive woman.
“Yes?”
“Blackmailers sometimes have friends. Either that, or somebody else who finds the blackmail material. Such a person might decide it would be a good idea to carry on where Brookman left off.”
I wasn’t doing a whole lot to help her lose that worried expression.
“I had thought of that,” she admitted.
“Right. Now if any such thing should happen, if anybody else tries to blackmail you, I want you to promise to get in touch with me.”
I scribbled my apartment phone number on a piece of paper and handed it to her.
“But if I do that, I’m no better off than before. The whole thing will come out,” she wailed.
“No, no,” I soothed, and I meant it. “It won’t come out. I’ll just have a private
