He was ugly, but it was the kind of ugliness that had probably always appealed to women, on the premise that under it must He some attribute far more fascinating than mere good looks. Torrant watched him from a cold distance that had nothing to do with the measurements of the booth, and Simeon gave a final instruction about lemon peel and turned back, smiling.
“A ritual,” he said, “and pointless most of the time. I’m sorry about intruding on you this way, Mr. Torrant. I think, though, that we have a mutual friend in town, haven’t we? Miss Blair?”
Torrant’s purely utilitarian drink arrived. He turned the icy glass once on the table without moving his gaze from Simeon. “As a matter of fact, it was her husband who was a close friend of mine. Did you know him at all—Martin Fennister?”
“Not as well as I would have liked to,” said Simeon. If he was surprised by the instant counterplay he didn’t show it. “He seemed a brilliant man. I was shocked to hear of his suicide.”
“So was I,” said Torrant, and put it down like a card between them. “He wrote me about his marriage about a year and a half ago, when I was abroad. I wasn’t getting a daily newspaper at that point and I came home expecting to see him.”
“And so,” murmured Simeon, “you wanted to look up his widow. Naturally.”
Something in the tone rather than in the words caught Torrant’s sharp attention. The bold beaky face across the table was sombre, a brooding parrot’s. “I’ve just lost a very good friend unexpectedly, too,” said Simeon. “Gerald Mallow and I knew each other well, in fact I was a partner of his at one time.”
Nice, Torrant thought after a moment of blank surprise; very nice. Cosy, lets match notes, you tell me what you know and I’ll tell you . . . He must have missed something in that instant of speculation, because the other man was saying reflectively, “—I was responsible for getting Miss Blair the job with Gerald.”
Torrant waited, his attention tightening. “I’d met her originally at the office of a friend, shortly before her marriage. When Gerald needed a capable secretary, trained in his line and with a mind of her own, I thought of her at once—and by that time,” said Simeon briefly, “she was . . . available again. I introduced her to Gerald and, as I knew he would, he found her more than competent.”
And nothing in between? thought Torrant. No deepening intimacy, no secret meetings when she wasn’t a secretary but a woman—and Martin’s wife? He said nothing at all, partly because there was no comment to make and partly because explanations were apt to grow in the face of a silence.
The waitress set down Simeon’s Martini, the color of well-chilled ice water. Simeon tasted it and gave a shudder of approval. He said, “I was in Florida, winding up some business there, when Miss Blair got in touch with me about the accident. She was in quite an upset state, as you can imagine, and on top of that in a strange place with no one to turn to. I came as soon as I could, of course. Under the circumstances I felt . . . involved.”
It was, Torrant felt, prettily put. In a few casual sentences it explained Simeon’s presence in Chauncy and advised Torrant to pack up his sleuthing kit and go home, because no murderess would send instantly for her victim’s close friend. The other man had drawn a parallel between them earlier, and this was the point of it: that Annabelle Blair, widowed by suicide and so soon confronted again by death in a violent form, was a woman to be helped instead of hunted.
There f was something surprisingly genuine in the beaked brooding face across the table, and for a brief moment Torrant almost believed in its sincerity. Then he remembered Simeon’s smooth bridging of his acquaintance with Annabelle, and the parrot mask looked what it was again, measuring and ugly and extremely clever. He had the attitude, it occurred to Torrant, of a chef wondering if a special dish didn’t need a dash more of something.
It came. Signalling to the waitress for another Martini, Simeon said with every air of frankness, “Of course, fond as I was of Gerald, and shocked as I was to hear of his death, I wasn’t blind to some of his . . . I don’t like to call them faults. But he drank very heavily—”
“And,” said Torrant, speaking for the first time except for a few polite and interrogative syllables that committed him to nothing, “he made very peculiar wills.”
In the booth behind them someone dropped a coin into the juke-box selector and a mournful female voice swelled over the restaurant noises. Torrant heard it only dimly; he was watching Simeon, who said after that small pause, “But is it so very peculiar, Mr. Torrant?”
“I think so,” said Torrant pleasantly. “I think it’s as peculiar as hell.”
“On the face of it, perhaps,” Simeon agreed slowly. “But— personalities aside, Mr. Torrant, why does a man generally make a will like that?”
The beat of the music entered the booth, putting a pulse into the waiting silence. Torrant considered a number of bald answers and said nothing; he wanted to watch Simeon’s game but he didn’t want to play it.
Simeon said softly, “Because he’s afraid of his life, Mr. Torrant. Because he’s worth a good deal of money, and he wants to remove a motive for murder from the person who
