“How is she?”
“Better. The prognosis now is considerably more optimistic. However, any emotional upset...”
The man was nervous. He kept fidgeting with his bow tie, the papers, the telephone cord.
“Incidentally, just what’s wrong with her?”
“Now, Inspector Queen, you can’t expect me to tell you that. If Mr. Humffrey wishes to discuss his wife’s illness, that’s his affair. As her physician, I can’t.”
He took out a small black notebook and leafed through it. Duane watched him alertly.
“Now, Doctor, there’s that business of your phone call on the afternoon of Saturday, August 20th, to the New York office of a lawyer named Finner—”
Dr. Duane stiffened as if his chair were wired. “My call?” he cried. “Why do you say that?”
“Because you made it.”
“You people are hounding me! I told those detectives long ago I knew nothing about a phone call to such a person.”
“Oh, some of the boys were up here on that?” the Inspector murmured. “When was this, Dr. Duane?”
“The last week in August. It seems that in investigating the murder of this man — Finner, was it? — the New York police claimed to have found a telephone company record of a toll call from this New Haven number to the man’s office... Didn’t you know they’d been here?” he asked, breaking off suspiciously.
“Of course. I also know, Doctor, that you did make that call.”
“Prove it,” Dr. Duane snapped. “You people prove it! I told your men at the time that it was a mistake. We have never had a patient named Finner here, or a patient directly connected with a person of that name. I showed them our records to prove that. It’s always possible some member of my staff put in such a call, but they have all denied it, and the only explanation I can offer is the one I gave — that someone here did call a New York number but got this fellow Finner’s number by mistake...”
“In a way it’s a break,” Richard Queen said thoughtfully to Jessie when he got back to her cottage in Rowayton. “His lie about the phone call to Finner’s office the afternoon of the murder stopped New York cold. Their one lead to Humffrey in this case was choked off at the source.”
“You haven’t said one word about whether you like my house,” Jessie said. She was surrounded by mops and pails, and she was furious.
“It’s pretty as a picture, Jessie. But about Duane’s lying. Privacy means money to Duane. His whole high-toned establishment is based on it. He can’t afford to have his name kicked around in a murder case. He’s not protecting Humffrey, he’s protecting himself.” He scowled into his coffee cup.
“Those people!”
“What people?”
“My tenants! The condition they left my beautiful little matchbox in! Pigs, that’s what they must be. Look at this filth, Richard!”
“I think I’ll run over and see Abe Pearl while I’m in the neighborhood,” he said philosophically.
“Would you? That will give me a chance to clean at least some of this mess.”
He grinned. “Never knew a woman who could look at a dirty house and think of anything else. All right, Jessie, I’ll get out of here.”
Abe Pearl almost tore his arm out of the socket.
“What’s happening, for God’s sake?” When the old man brought him up to date, he shook his head. “That Humffrey dame might just as well be rotting in solitary somewhere. Do you suppose she’s gone clean off her rocker, Dick, and that’s why they won’t let anyone see her?”
“No,” Richard Queen said slowly. “No, Abe, I don’t think so. What happened up there today only confirms a suspicion I’ve had.”
“What’s that?”
“I think Humffrey’s main reason for putting his wife out of circulation in a place where he can be sure she can’t be got at — and himself staying away, now that he’s being tailed day and night — is to keep us from her.”
“I don’t get it,” Chief Pearl said.
“He’s put her where nobody can talk to her. He’d like us to forget she ever existed. Abe, Humffrey is scared to death of something his wife might tell us.”
“About him?” The big man was puzzled.
“About him and the baby’s death. It’s got to be about little Mike’s murder — she probably hasn’t even been told about the other two. And if it’s something Alton Humffrey doesn’t want us to know, then it’s something we’ve got to find out. The problem is, how to get to Sarah Humffrey...”
Jessie wanted to stay over, claiming that it would take a week to clean her house properly. But he hurried her back to the city.
They found Hugh Giffin picking disconsolately at his scar, and Al Murphy staring at the backs of his red-furred hands.
“Hospital,” Giffin said. “Nothing, Inspector. The trail goes back to Finner, and Finner only. Even Finner didn’t pay the bills directly. Connie Coy paid them with the cash Finner provided. Humffrey kept a million miles away from it.”
“Murph,” the Inspector said. “Any luck with the cabs?”
“Nope,” the ex-sergeant said gloomily. “I must have tackled every hackie stationed around Grand Central. Just didn’t hit it, that’s all. Either this Humffrey hopped a cruising cab when he followed the girl home that night, or else he used a private car.”
The old man shook his head. “He’d have felt safer taking a public carrier, Murph. Actually, all he had to do when he saw her climb into a cab with her luggage at Grand Central was take another cab, maybe on Madison or Lexington, and be driven to the general neighborhood of the apartment, then walk over. After the shooting he probably just walked away — another pedestrian out for some air.”
Murphy looked unhappy.
“It’s all right,” Inspector Queen shrugged. “We’ll just have to keep digging.”
He clapped the two men on the shoulder and sent them home.
The following night, when Johnny Kripps came up with his day’s report on Humffrey, the old man said, “I’m calling you off the tail, Johnny. Pete Angelo can take over.”
“You firing me, Inspector?” the bespectacled ex-Homicide man asked, not altogether humorously.
“At the salary you’re getting?” He grinned, not humorously either. “Johnny, have you been spotted by any of the working details?”
“I don’t think so.”
“We’ll have to start cutting corners. We’re getting nowhere. Here’s what I want you to do — I’d do it myself, but you’re the logical man for the job. Drop in at Homicide and see some of the boys. A friendly visit to your old pals, you understand.”
“Steer the talk around to the Coy and Finner cases?”
“Especially the Coy case. Find out what they’ve got. Don’t overdo it, Johnny — I don’t want to have to bail you out of 125 White Street!”
Kripps reported the next afternoon. “They’ve drawn a skunk egg, Inspector. All they had on the Finner case was that New Haven toll call, and Duane’s pooped them on that. The fact that he’s an M.D. running a private sanitarium gave them the bright idea at first that he was mixed up with Finner in the baby racket, but the more they’ve investigated Duane the cleaner he washes. Finner’s case files they’ve exhausted without a lead.”
“And Coy?” Richard Queen asked grimly.
“Believe it or not, they haven’t been able to come up with a single witness who saw a damn thing the night she got it. By the way, they think too that the killer hopped three or four roofs before he hit for ground level. Just walked down, and out, and away, probably on West End Avenue.”
The Inspector tormented his mustache.
“All they’ve got in the Coy case is the bullet they’ve taken from her head and the ones from the plaster.” Kripps shrugged. “Three slugs from the same gun. 38 Special ammo.”