“Oh,” she said. “You.”
Her face was moderately haggard, and her lids were so swollen that her eyes didn’t seem anything like as keen and shrewd as they had the day before.
I asked if I could come in, and she made room for me and then led the way into a large living-room. Sitting there was Carrie Murphy. She looked as if she had been either crying or fighting; with an Irish girl you can’t tell.
“You folks look kind of all in,” I said sympathetically.
Miss Yates grunted. “We didn’t get much sleep. They kept us up most of the night, and who could sleep, anyway?” She gazed at me curiously. “It was you that found him.”
“It was,” I agreed.
“What did you go there for?”
“Just to invite him to call on Nero Wolfe to discuss quinine.”
“Oh. I was going to phone you. I want to see Amy Duncan. Do you know where she is?”
That made her a pushover. “Well,” I said, “she spent the night up at our place under the care of a doctor. I left early this morning, so I can’t guarantee that she’s still there, but I suppose she is.”
“The paper says,” Carrie Murphy put in, “that she’s going to be detained for questioning. Does that mean that she’s suspected of killing her uncle?”
“Certainly.”
“Then—”
“We want to see her,” Miss Yates interposed.
“Okay, come along. I’ve got a car.”
It still lacked a couple of minutes till eleven when we got there, so Wolfe hadn’t come down from the plant rooms, and the office was empty. I got the visitors arranged in chairs and then beat it to the roof. Wolfe was at the sink in the potting room washing his hands.
“The baboon named Judd,” I reported, “is going to have me jailed for annoying him. Probably you, too. He’s the kind you read about, made of silk reinforced with steel, very tough. He has informed the police that Cliff is a liar. I went to Tingley’s and found no one there. I found Miss Yates at her apartment, and Carrie Murphy there making a call, and they said they wanted to see Amy Duncan, so I told them she was here and brought them along.”
I made myself scarce before he could make what he would have regarded as a fitting comment on my failure to get Judd. On my way down I stopped at my room to powder my nose, and heard the elevator start its descent, so I hurried along.
He acted fairly human when I introduced the two callers. After ringing for beer and heaving a sigh of pleasure when Fritz brought it in, he leaned back and slanted his eyes at Gwendolyn.
“Mr. Goodwin tells me you wish to see Miss Duncan. She’s not here. The police came with a warrant and took her.”
“A warrant?” Carrie Murphy demanded. “Do you mean she’s arrested?”
“Yes. As a material witness. They took her from my house. I don’t like people being taken from my house with warrants. Her bond is being arranged for. Are you ladies friends of hers?”
“We know her,” said Miss Yates. “We’re not enemies. We don’t want to see her unjustly accused.”
“Neither do I. I think it very unlikely that she had anything to do with that quinine. What do you think?”
“The same as you do. Will they let us see her?”
“I doubt it.”
“You see,” Carrie blurted, “there’s something we didn’t tell the police! We didn’t want them to know about the quinine!”
Wolfe shrugged. “That’s absurd. They already know. Not only from Mr. Goodwin, from Mr. Cliff, too. What was it that you didn’t tell them?”
“We didn’t—” Carrie checked herself and looked at her boss. Miss Yates compressed her lips and said nothing. Carrie transferred back to Wolfe. “We don’t know,” she said, “whether it’s important or not. From what it says in the paper we can’t tell. That’s what we want to ask Amy. Can we ask you?”
“Try.”
“Well — Amy was there, wasn’t she?”
“At the Tingley Building last evening? Yes.”
“What time did she get there?”
“Five minutes past seven.”
“And what happened?”
“As she entered the office someone who was hiding behind the screen hit her on the head with an iron weight and knocked her unconscious. She remained unconscious for an hour. When Mr. Goodwin arrived, at eight minutes past eight, she was trying to descend the stairs, but collapsed again. He brought her here, after investigating upstairs and finding Tingley’s body. She says that when she entered the office her uncle was not in sight, so it is supposed that he was already dead.”
Carrie shook her head. “He wasn’t.”
Wolfe’s brows went up. “He wasn’t?”
“No. And Amy didn’t kill him.”
“Indeed. Were you there?”
“Of course I wasn’t there. But if she had been knocked unconscious, could she have murdered a man? Even if she would?”
“Probably not. But you are postulating that she is telling the truth. The police aren’t so gallant. What if she’s lying? What if someone hit her after she had killed her uncle? What if she killed him soon after her arrival?”
“Oh, no,” Carrie declared triumphantly, “she couldn’t! That’s just it! Because we know he was alive at eight o’clock!”
Wolfe gazed at her, with his lips pushed out. Then he poured beer, drank, used his handkerchief, leaned back, and leveled his eyes at her again. “That’s interesting,” he murmured. “How do you know that?”
“He was talking on the telephone.”
“At eight o’clock?”
“Yes.”
“To you?”
“No,” Miss Yates interposed. “To me. At my home. Miss Murphy was there and heard it.”
“Are you sure it was Mr. Tingley?”
“Certainly. I’ve known him all my life.”
“What were you talking about?”
Gwendolyn answered, “A private matter.”
Wolfe shook his head. “The police will soon pull you off that perch, madam. It’s murder. I, of course, have no authority, but, since we’ve gone this far...”
“It’s about the quinine. One of the girls reported to me that she had seen Miss Murphy doing something suspicious. Yesterday afternoon, just before closing time. Sneaking some of a mix into a little jar and concealing it. I asked Miss Murphy for an explanation and she refused to give any. Told me that she had nothing to say—”
“I couldn’t—”
“Let me finish, Carrie. After she had gone home I went to Mr. Tingley’s office and was going to tell him about it, but I don’t think he even heard what I said. I had never seen him so upset. Philip, his adopted son, had just been there, and I suppose that was it, but he didn’t say anything about Philip. I left at a quarter after six and went home to my flat on Twenty-third Street. I always walk; it’s only a seven minutes’ walk. I took off my hat and coat and rubbers and put my umbrella in the bathtub to drain, and ate some sardines and cheese—”
She stopped, and grunted. “The police asking me questions all night seems to have got me into a habit. I don’t suppose you care what I ate. About half past seven Miss Murphy came. She said she had been thinking it over and had decided she ought to tell me about it. What she told me made me madder than I’ve ever been in my life. Mr. Tingley suspected me of putting that quinine in! Me!”
“That isn’t fair, Miss Yates,” Carrie protested. “It was only—”
“Rubbish!” Gwen snapped. “He had you spying on me, didn’t he?”
“But he—”
“I say he had you spying on me!” Miss Yates turned to Wolfe. “Since this trouble started, we’ve kept a sharp eye on the mixers and filling benches, and I’ve sent a sample of every mix in to Mr. Tingley, including even Carrie’s. And, behind my back, she was sending him samples of my mixes!”