“Call the Tewmans, Van.”
Mrs. Tewman and the rabbity man came in. They, too, must have been in the hall, waiting for this.
“Now, Mr. Tewman, I want to ask you a question. Can you use the same saw on steel you can on wood?”
“Saw?”
“Yes, saw.”
“I dunno. I guess so.”
“Ever see any saws around this house?”
“Saws? Yeah, I guess so. Saw in the toolbox. Under the washtubs.”
“Oh hell, I’ll never get anywhere this way. You go ahead and repeat your story about where you were Monday night.”
“Well, chief, I was at the inquest, see?” The man was trembling a little. “I’m on nights at my hamburger house, see, because my brother’s on daytimes and I’m on nights. So my wife comes back to this house here to get our stuff, and I go right on down to my business. My brother is there, and we talk over this inquest, see, until he goes home around nine o’clock. And it’s like I said, chief, I can prove I didn’t leave my business one minute because, why, the place it’s in, there wouldn’t be one stick left in it when I come back if I’d went away. And it’s still all there.”
“That’s a damn good piece of logic,” the lieutenant said to me. “That story checks, too. We hunted up a couple customers. Now for you, Mrs. Tewman.”
“I come right on back to the house.” Her sullen voice held anger. “And I wasn’t going to stay in it a minute I didn’t have to, either, with that Mrs. Halloran bossing around. So the minute I seen there wasn’t a cop in the hall, I went down and packed up quick. I took our stuff over to Jim’s brother’s house and stayed there. You ain’t going to get me back here, either.”
“No, Mrs. Tewman, I think we’ll let you stay away. You left your key?”
“Right on top of the bookcase in the hall.”
“You see?” To me. “The key was there. Of course it’s possible for the Tewmans or the Hallorans to have had a duplicate key made, or to have sent someone else here Monday night. But I doubt it. Such a person wouldn’t know enough about the house.”
To the Tewmans he added, “You may go now.”
They went with alacrity.
“I called those four witnesses first for a reason, Mrs. Dacres. I’m convinced that they had nothing whatever to do with the attack on you, and therefore, since we think the two are related, with the attack on Mrs. Garr. For my part, I intend to eliminate them in my further search for the criminal. But it’s different with the rest of the people I’m interviewing. It’s my best opinion that every one of them is strongly to be suspected!”
—
MY MIND RANGED RAPIDLY over the rest of the people who were connected with Mrs. Garr’s house.
“What do you mean?” I asked flatly.
“Well, look at this thing. Was it someone outside the house? No. It was someone who had access, easy access, to the cellar. Who knew the house and the habits of its inmates thoroughly. If the murderer isn’t one of the residents here I’ll eat all my notes.”
He gave me a side glance.
“After I had to eat that money you and Mrs. Halloran dug up I’m not taking chances with any more paper diets, either. Who do we have as possibilities, then? First, Kistler. Plenty easy for him to have sneaked downstairs again after three a.m., Mrs. Dacres?” He grinned. “Somehow you don’t seem the suicide type, and it’s very difficult to bat yourself on the head first and then chloroform yourself second.”
“By the way”—I was curious—“did you ever find what hit me?”
“Sure. Didn’t I tell you? Hammer from the toolbox downstairs. Not a print on that, either. That’s another argument it was someone in the house. Knew where the tools were.”
I shuddered.
“All right. Where were we? Kistler. Buffingham. Grant. Miss Sands. The Wallers. Six people. If it isn’t one of those six people I’ll eat—no, I guess I better quit eating.”
“I don’t think it was a woman. I think it was a man. Except that Miss Sands does have that can—”
“Sure. Except. Except. And if it was the Wallers they must both be in on it. They stick together on their story, anyhow. So that really makes just five possibilities.”
“Too bad you can’t just put all six in jail.”
“You don’t know how I wish I could. Innocent till proved guilty, pooey. Let’s have Buffingham down, Van.”
Van came back alone.
“Gone to work. Gus in the hall here says Johnson’s tailing him.”
“Hell, what’s the matter with me? He would be. Have to wait for him, then. I’ll take Grant.”
Poor old Mr. Grant came in blinking as usual. Again I thought that he had aged, shriveled in this one week, as if something had gone out of him. He was patently nervous, baked as if he hadn’t slept much.
The lieutenant explained the reasons for this second questioning.
“As I told you yesterday, sir”—Mr. Grant sat well forward on his dinette chair, his hands on his knees—“I was upset by the inquest. I kept thinking about—well, thinking. I dined downtown. I walked home from town. I went up to my room and endeavored to read, but my attention wandered. That was how I spent the entire evening.”
“You read all evening?”
“Well, I looked over a few old keepsakes in my trunk for a time.”
“How late was it when you went out?”
“About eleven, I think.” Apologetically.
“You in the habit of walking so late at night?”
“I have been this past week.” He smiled faintly. “You should know. I have seen one of your men following me.”
Lieutenant Strom grunted. “Okay.”
“I walked down the steps to Water Street and wandered about down there. I was nervous. A great many things had come up at the inquest which disturbed me.”
“Yeah? What things?”
“The provisions of the will. Irony. A wicked woman, coming to her just deserts.”
The lieutenant’s voice was low.
“So you think Mrs. Garr got no more than
