Her hands were fluttering, her mouth spluttering. She subsided when her husband put a protective arm around her.
“When the boys began to move in oh the judge,” I said, “he knew the game was up. He was afraid the contact man, Floyd Oster, would make a deal and turn state’s evidence. He did not need a crystal ball. He could see the future, disgrace and a prison sentence, staring at him. The pressure was too great. He could not face it. He was terrified and distraught, half out of his mind with despair. There was no way out — except one — and he took it. A bullet in his head.”
“Come off it,” Denby said. “You can’t know that for a fact. If the judge killed himself, what happened to the gun?”
“You took it,” I said.
“What!”
“You took it, Denby. You arrived at the house shortly after it happened. You went up to the study and you saw him sitting there, dead, and you knew what it meant. You could see that half a million dollars go down the drain. A terrible loss. So you acted. He had dropped the gun on the floor and you picked it up. You had to get out of there, but first, for insurance, to bolster the murder angle, you pumped another shot at him. Death by violence. Double indemnity, and double the ante. One million bucks.”
A spasmodic twitch pulled at the juncture of Denby’s jaw. “Slander,” he said hoarsely. “In front of witnesses.”
I laughed. “You’ve got a lot more to worry about than slander. And if you’re talking about witnesses, hell yes, there was a witness.”
Wienick’s hand clamped over my arm. “A witness? Who?”
“Andrew Stock,” I said. “The judge’s law clerk. Stock saw it.”
“How do you know?”
“Remember the cigarette butts? And the smoke? They were his. He was there, as usual, in the next room, the bedroom, working. He did not hear the first shot because his hearing aid was disconnected. Routine for him. But then, probably because he had found some rule of law or precedent he wanted to show the judge, he turned it on and headed for the study. That’s when he heard the second shot. He peeked through the door and saw Denby, standing there with the gun. He never said a word. He was in shock. He backed away, thinking only of saving his own life. Maybe he even hid in a closet.”
Clive Denby smiled, a hideous grimace. “Guesswork,” he said. “All guesswork.”
“It’s a lot more than that, Denby. There was almost no blood from the second shot. Meaning the judge was already dead. That was thoughtless, Denby. Careless. You weren’t thinking clearly. You were nervous, under pressure.”
“You could never prove anything like that. Stock is dead.”
Sergeant Wienick gave a start.
“Exactly,” I said. “But how would you know? It hasn’t been broadcast yet. You know because you yourself put him on the shelf. Poor, ugly, ineffective Andrew Stock. When he thought it over, he realized he’d be out of a job. No work, no income. And then he had the glimmer of an idea. He had information. He knew something that was worth money. Why not make it pay off? So, Denby, he shook you down for a slice of the insurance money. You were on a spot and you had no choice. But all you could raise at the moment was thirty-five hundred dollars. We found it in Stock’s apartment. You searched for it, didn’t you? But couldn’t find it, because you were in a hurry and didn’t look in the right place. You could have found it in one of his shoes.”
“More guesswork,” he whispered.
“Is it? Suppose we check your bank account for recent withdrawals. What will it show? Have you pulled thirty-five hundred dollars in the last twenty-four hours?”
What it would show was etched on his face. He crouched back, his breathing ragged, watching me with a kind of reptilian venom. His wife edged away from him, staring in vacillating faith bordering on shocked incredulity.
“Andrew Stock,” I said, “that poor sad little clown, did not know what he was getting into. He did not know that there is only one solution for handling a blackmailer. Unless you want to keep on paying until he milks you dry, you have to stop his clock for good, once and for all. You have to end the demands by ending the blackmailer — and that’s what you did. You finished him off with a carving knife from his own kitchen.”
Wienick had moved closer, watchful and alert. He said to me, not taking his eyes from Denby, “And are you telling us this man framed the judge’s widow by planting the gun in her car?”
“I am telling you exactly that. Oh, he’s a shrewd one, all right. It threw up a smoke screen to mislead the police. If it worked, if she were implicated and convicted, Denby’s wife would rake in all the chips, the whole million, because under the law a murderer is not permitted to inherit from his victim through the commission of homicide. Cold-blooded? Letting an innocent woman take the rap? You bet your life! But he felt no compunctions at all because he hated the woman. So he began to spin his little web of duplicity to mask the truth and line his pockets.”
Clive Denby’s eyes were feverish, abnormally bright, and his breathing had a harsh catarrhal quality. He kept shaking his head.
“Whatever you may think of Laura Bolt,” I said, “she is no cretin, no imbecile. She would never hide a murder weapon in her own car. She’s at least smart enough to maybe drop it off the Staten Island ferry where it would be lost forever.”
Moisture bathed Denby’s face from hairline to chin. His whispered voice sounded hollow and forced. “No proof. You have no proof. Not one iota of proof.”
“Wrong,” I said. “Dead wrong. Haven’t you ever heard of the nitrate test? Whenever a man fires a gun, some of the unburned powder grains are blown back and buried in the skin of his hand. Powder tattooing, it’s called, and it can be picked out with a forceps to show whether or not you’ve handled a gun. It doesn’t come off with soap and water, Denby. They’re going to test you, sure as hell. You can’t stop them. Is there any nitrate residue on your hand now, Denby?”
He clenched his fists and held them near his chest for a moment. Then he opened his right hand and looked at it — and then he left the rails completely. In a sudden obliterating fog of mindless rage, bellowing obscenities, he lunged at me. I sidestepped and as he went past, Wienick rabbit-punched him at the base of the neck. Wienick’s hand is like a cleaver. Denby went down on his knees, gulping for air. His wife cut loose with a long despairing cry and then bent over, covering her face.
I didn’t feel particularly sorry for either of them.