him with you during questioning. If you cannot afford a lawyer and want one—” (So help me, he said that.) “—a lawyer will be provided for you. If you want to answer questions without a lawyer, you still have the right to stop at any time. You also have the right to stop answering at any time until you talk to a lawyer.”
After that, my father and the three cops went away. They didn’t put handcuffs on him, but maybe I would have felt better if they had.
When we heard the front door close, Blue stood up and gave me his handkerchief. I’d been using the hem of my nightie, and I guess it was getting pretty wet. Blue’s handkerchief was just a cheap cotton job that had been washed a lot, but it was clean. When I’d gotten calmed down a little I asked if he still had my father’s check in his pocket.
“No,” he said. “I have a Hollander Safe and Lock Company check, signed by the chief operating officer of the Hollander Safe and Lock Company.”
“It’s his check, and you know it. Couldn’t you have done
“I did what I could,” Blue said.
“Like hell.”
“No, Holly. What would you have wanted me to do? Argue in his behalf? As soon as I began, Sandoz would have forced me to leave—if necessary by having one of his subordinates arrest me on some trivial charge. As it was, he permitted me to remain. Most policemen originally became policemen because of a desire to show off—to strut in uniform, gun on hip. Most never quite outgrow it, and occasionally that can be employed to advantage. Lieutenant Sandoz wanted me, the criminologist, to realize what a clever detective he is.”
“So now you do.”
“Thanks to my silence, I know the case against your father, yes.”
“Do you think he killed Larry and all those people?”
“Do you?”
I shook my head.
“Are you sure, or are you just being loyal to him?”
“I wouldn’t be very loyal, would I, if I said I wasn’t sure.”
“As for me, I’m not certain what I believe.” Blue stood up again, lifting himself on his cane the way he always did. “When I entered this room, I was, I admit—or almost certain, at least. That was the real reason I asked for a company check. It would have been less than ethical for me to have accepted a retainer from your father, as an individual, when I strongly suspected he had built that bomb. I was even more suspicious when he agreed to such a large one. Now I don’t know.”
“Wait a minute,” I said. “That was before Sandoz showed us those love letters. In fact, it was before he ever came in and started his song and dance.”
“Of course.”
I wiped my nose. “So what made you think my father was the one? Had you figured out all that stuff Sandoz told us?”
Blue looked mad. “I’d thought of most of it, and rejected a lot of it. It had nothing to do with my decision. Look at the mantel over that fireplace and tell me what you see there.”
“A picture of Elaine; a picture of my father and Elaine—you don’t want me to describe the clothes in those pictures, do you? A map. That’s on the rocks behind the mantel, really—”
“A map of what?”
“A map of Europe, with a red line from Italy to France and up into Germany, the way my father went. A German officer’s hat that he makes Mrs. Maas clean with one of the attachments to the vacuum cleaner. Oh, and a fancy dagger. You don’t notice that because it lies down flat. Was that what you wanted?”
“Specifically, a Nazi SS dagger; its blade is engraved with the rather fatuous sentiment,
I said, “I don’t understand why the dagger’s important.”
“It isn’t. Or then again, perhaps it is, depending on how one looks at these things. You might say that it’s no more and no less significant than the cap. Lieutenant Sandoz laid stress on the importance of similarities in solving seemingly unrelated crimes. Perhaps he should have considered that both the shell that exploded at the high school and the pistol he found in your father’s desk came from Germany, and in fact from Nazi Germany.”
“You didn’t know about the pistol when you came in here. Or did you?”
Blue shook his head. “But I knew about the shell, so when I saw the officer’s cap I crossed the room to have a look at it while your father was getting you settled on that sofa. I saw the SS dagger then, and I saw something else as well. You must have been in this room many times. Haven’t you noticed by now that something’s missing from the mantel?”
“No, I’ve never paid that much attention to that stuff.”
“You’re protecting your father, so I can hardly expect you to tell me; but that mantel shows quite clearly where the shell was removed from it.”
“Are you talking about dust? I came in here one time and saw where Pandora’s Box had been sitting on the library table, because Mrs. Maas hadn’t dusted it yet. Only if you think she hasn’t dusted in here since the bomb went off, you’re batty. If that was true, I’d see dust all over, and I don’t.”
“That’s not what I mean,” Blue said. “It seems clear that your father telephoned and notified his family that he would be returning from New York—he would have to do it if he wanted to be sure his chauffeur would be free to meet him at the airport. When the word came, your Mrs. Maas would have taken good care to clean this room, as she obviously has. But when an object rests for years in one position on dark wood, the wood beneath it will always
