“It was five months ago.” She thought for a moment. “No, he wouldn’t change the locks. He’d think of it but he would never get around to it.”
I wondered why she had ever set up housekeeping with Mallard in the first place. He wasn’t all that much to look at, and the more I heard about him the less enthusiastic I got about seeing him.
“You had better take that key,” Haig said. “You needn’t see Miss Remo or Miss Cubbage until late tonight Mrs. Henderson can keep until tomorrow. Miss Tattersail can probably keep throughout eternity as far as we are concerned. A cranky old woman might be capable of harassment. Such persons frequently poison other people’s dogs and cats. It’s a form of paranoia, I believe. I cannot imagine her flipping curare-tipped darts at a topless dancer.”
“She wouldn’t even walk into Treasure Chest,” Tulip said. “Not a chance.”
I felt like a character in a comic strip with a little light bulb forming over my head. “Just a minute,” I said. “Earlier today you said the person who poisoned the fish was someone different from the person who poisoned Cherry.” Tulip gaped and started to say something but I pressed on. “Does that mean the Tattersall woman poisoned the fish? And how do you know that, and why don’t I talk to her and find out why? Because we already decided the two things tied in, they had to tie in, and—”
Haig showed me the palm of his right hand. “Stop,” he said. “Helen Tattersall did not poison the fish. Let us for the moment forget Helen Tattertsall entirely.”
“Then who did poison the fish? And how—”
“In due course,” Haig said. “There is a distinction between a surmise and conclusion. There is no need to air one’s surmises. It’s odd that Mr. Flatt hasn’t called. When did you see him last, Miss Wolinski?”
She thought it over, trying to frown her memory into supplying the answer, and the phone picked that minute to ring. I reached for it but Haig waved me off and snatched it himself.
He said, “Hello? Ah, Mr. Flatt. I was expecting your call. Yes. Let me make this short and to the point. I am representing your ex-wife, Miss Thelma Wolinski, in an investigation of the murder of her roommate . . . . If you’ll permit me to continue, Mr. Flatt. Thank you. I have only one question to ask you. Why did you quit the premises of Treasure Chest so abruptly last night when Miss Bounce was murdered? No, sir, the identification was positive. No, I have not informed them. The police and I do not pool our information, sir. Indeed.” There was a pause, and Tulip and I spent it looking at each other. “I want you in my office tomorrow afternoon, Mr. Flatt. At three o’clock. No, make that three-thirty. I don’t care what you tell your employers. Three-thirty. 311 1/2 West 20th Street, third floor. I look forward to it.”
He hung up the phone and tried not to look smug. It was a nice try but he didn’t quite make it.
Tulip said, “How did you know he was there? I didn’t see him. Who told you?”
“Mr. Flatt told me. Just now.”
“But you said—”
He shrugged. “Chip left a message for Mr. Flatt almost five hours ago. He might have called back immediately, routinely returning a call. He did not. He took time to establish that I am a detective and to stew a bit in his own juices. Then, knowing that I am a detective and guessing what I wanted of him, he ultimately returned my call. If he had called back immediately or not at all he might well have had nothing to hide. By taking the middle course, so to speak, he established to my satisfaction that he was at Treasure Chest last night.”
This absolutely impressed the daylights out of Tulip. She couldn’t get over how brilliant he was, and he was so delighted with her admiration that he celebrated with a Clark bar and rang Wong for more coffee.
Wong brought two cups. He must have sensed that I wasn’t having any. I would have liked another cup but I would have had to stay in that room to drink it and that was out of the question. And he’d had the nerve I to say phooey to my theory about Haskell Henderson and the health food conspiracy! I’d been babbling, for Pete’s sake, but I’d come as close to reality as that load of crap about he-didn’t-call-early-and-he-didn’t-not-call.
It had been a bluff, pure and simple. If Flatt just told him he was crazy he could roll with the punch, and if Flatt bought the whole pitch then he was home free. It was a bluff, and a fairly standard bluff, and not too far removed from what I’d pulled on Henderson. I had to give him credit, he’d read his lines beautifully, but all it was was a bluff and the explanation he thought up later was just that, something he thought up afterward to fit the facts and make him look like the genius he wanted to be.
Of all the goddamned cheap grandstand plays, and of course Tulip bought it all across the board. And I’d had to sit there and watch. Well, I didn’t have to put up with any more of it. I dialed Mallard’s number once more, just as a matter of form, and then I scooped the key off the desk and got away from Miss Willing and Mr. Wonderful.
Andrew Mallard’s apartment—by virtue of squatter’s rights it was his, anyway—was on Arbor Street near the corner of Bank. I had more time than I needed to get his story before I was due at Treasure Chest, and I wanted to walk off some of the irritation I felt toward Haig, so I hiked down Eighth until it turned into Hudson Street, and then I groped around until I found Bank, made a lucky guess, and located Arbor Street. I usually get lost in the West Village, and the farther west I go the loster I get. I can find almost any place, but only if I start out in the right place. (I’m not the only one who has that trouble. When you’ve got a geometrically sensible city with streets running east and west and avenues running north and south, and then you rig up a neighborhood in which everything goes in curves and diagonals and Fourth Street intersects with Eleventh Street, you’re just begging for trouble.)
I looked for a bell with Mallard on it and couldn’t find one. Then I went through the listings carefully and found one that said Wolinski. He really was an inert type, no question about it. I mean, he’d been there five months by himself, and for a certain amount of time before that he’d shared the place with her, and her name was still on the bell and his wasn’t.
I rang his bell and nothing happened. I rang it again and some more nothing happened, and I tried Tulip’s key in the downstairs door and of course it didn’t fit, it was the key to the apartment. I wondered why she hadn’t given me both keys and then I wondered why this hadn’t occurred to me earlier. I said a twelve-letter word that I don’t usually say aloud, and then I rang a couple of other bells, and somebody pushed a buzzer and I opened the door.
Mallard’s apartment was on the third floor. I knocked on his door for a while and nothing happened. I decided he was either out or asleep or catatonic and there was no point in persisting, but it had been a long walk and I had the damned key in my hand so I persisted. At 8:37 I let myself into his apartment.
Ten
AT 8:51 I let myself out.
Eleven
I WALKED INTO the first bar I saw, went straight up to the bar and ordered a double Irish whiskey. The bartender poured it and I drank it right down. Then I paid for it, and I scooped up a dime from my change and headed for the phone booth in the rear. I invested the dime and dialed seven numbers and Leo Haig answered on the fourth ring.
I said, “How clean is our phone? Do you suppose we’re all alone or do we have company?”
“Let us act as though we have company.”
“Probably a good idea. I’m at a pay phone and I understand they’re all tapped. But who has the time to monitor all of them? Of course if somebody was listening in I’d be a dead duck and that would make two tonight.”
“I see.”
“I was hoping you would.”
“You’re certain of the fact?”
“Positive.”
