I waited in the hall for the maid to come back, but she didn’t come. In her place, after awhile, Martin Farmer came, the shirttail cousin. He was superficially polite, but I could tell that I was considered a nuisance. Mrs. Coon, he said, wasn’t seeing anyone. Mrs. Coon wasn’t feeling well and couldn’t be disturbed.
“That’s too bad,” I said. “Give my sympathy to Mrs. Coon, and tell her that Mr. Hand has important information that compels him to insist.”
“Oh? Perhaps, if you were to tell me, I could relay the information to Mrs. Coon later.”
It was a touchy point in our negotiations, and for a moment it seemed questionable whether I would get a concession or a polite bum’s rush. Martin Farmer hesitated, considering the alternatives, then he shrugged and conceded.
“I’ll see,” he said. “Please wait in the library. You know the way.”
I went to the library. I waited. After about five minutes had passed, Dulce Coon came into the library with her shirttail close behind her. Martin Farmer, that is. He stopped near the door. She came on and stopped a step or two away. This time she was wearing a white blouse and tight black pants. Her feet, bare, were thrust into flat sandals that were no more than thin soles with narrow straps attached. She was annoyed, to say the least, and she clearly was determined to make short work of me.
“Mr. Hand,” she said, “I thought I made it clear that our relationship had ended. Why have you come here again?”
“I’m here,” I said, “to tell you that I’ve found Myrna. I thought you’d want to know.”
There was a moment of silence in which no one moved or breathed. Then Martin Farmer stirred suddenly by the door, but I didn’t look at him. I kept looking at Dulce Coon. Crimson spots had begun to burn in her cheeks, and her eyes glittered behind heavy lashes. Her lips moved soundlessly and were quickly still, as if she had been about to protest an impossible claim, Myrna being a myth. But this would have been a bad mistake, and she caught the mistake in time.
“Where?” she said.
“Where I least expected her.”
“Don’t be evasive, Mr. Hand. Who is she?”
“You. You’re Myrna, Mrs. Coon.”
“And you’re insane.” She laughed harshly, and her voice dripped scorn. “It’s apparent that I made a mistake in coming to you in the first place.”
“You made a mistake, all right, and your mistake was in taking me for more of a fool than I was. Once you had decided just how to kill your husband, you needed a witness to establish the existence of a murderess who didn’t exist. Someone not very clever. Not nearly as clever as you, for example. I don’t know just how you happened to pick on me, but I’m sorry that I couldn’t accommodate you.”
“Are you less of a fool than I thought? Clearly, you are even more of one.”
“Let him talk, Dulce.” The voice was Martin Farmer’s, coming from the door, and it possessed a quality of silken amusement that warned me, suddenly, that I was listening to a dangerous man. “Even a fool can recognize foolishness if he hears enough of it.”
“Thanks,” I said. “I appreciate the opportunity to hang myself. Never mind how I finally tumbled to the fact that you were Myrna, Mrs. Coon. It took me long enough, and I’m not proud of it. Spike heels for added height, being careful at all other times to let me see you only in flats. A blond wig which can, incidentally, be traced, now that we know it was yours. Not only did it have to be bought, it also had to be dressed, and it will be only a matter of time until the police learn who sold it and who dressed it. For the big performance, a calculated emphasis of sex, which for you was easy. More than all this, dark glasses and a dark lounge and every precaution to prevent my getting a good look at you. Your face was always in shadows and turned away. When you left, you left quickly, exposing only your back in the light outside. Unfortunately for you, my ears are better than my eyes.”
“What absurd thing is that supposed to mean?”
“Trade secret. I’ll keep it, if you don’t mind. Anyhow, once I knew it was you in the lounge, I could see that the whole show was phony. For example, you told me that you learned about Myrna by overhearing on an extension a conversation she had with your husband. In this house, there are surely several telephones, most of them without extensions. Why would your husband have received a call from a blackmailer on a phone which offered even the slightest opportunity for eavesdropping to a third person? I don’t think he would have.”
“This is really incredible. If it weren’t so libelous, I might find it amusing.” Her voice was still harsh, however soft, and the blood still burned in her cheeks. She was possessed, I thought, by a kind of unholy excitement. “Now that you have decided that I devised this elaborate hoax, perhaps you will tell me why I wanted to murder my husband.”
“You tell me. Money? That was part of it, I suspect. Money, and the man who helped you murder him.”
“So now there is a man involved. What man, please?”
“The man you met in the Normandy Lounge. Martin Farmer.”
“This is getting more and more absurd. You are insane, aren’t you? I thought all the time that I was presumed to have met my husband there.”
“That’s what I was expected to presume, that the man in the lounge was your husband. But he wasn’t. He was Martin Farmer. Your shirttail cousin. His term, not mine. He had only to exercise the same care that you did to get away with it. Wear the clothes you said your husband would wear. Keep his face obscured in the shadows.
