“He knew how his partner would react to Lancaster’s death, knew the moment he learned of it, he would unload the stock and return the money to the company account. He must have planned it all out while listening to Knight and Lancaster argue. In the middle of the argument he went next door, ostensibly to quiet Knight down, and surreptitiously opened the key of Knight’s call box. This allowed Matilda Graves to hear the tail end of the argument, thereby establishing a witness to Knight’s threat.
“Then he went home, established an alibi for himself by phoning back to the office and leaving word he was flying out of town, and at the same time put Knight in a position where he couldn’t explain where he was When Lancaster was shot.”
Isobel looked at her husband with disbelief. When he did nothing but continue to look back at her piteously, she turned her attention back to me.
“But... but,” she stuttered, “why would he then kill Willard? If he put up with Willard and me for two months without even opening his mouth, why suddenly kill him?”
The inspector recovered his voice. “Once you’ve killed, the second time is easy. The penalty for one murder is the same as the penalty for fifty.”
“Also,” I put in, “perhaps Harlan felt stealing his wife was one thing, but when Knight started stealing his money, he was going too far.”
Warren Day stared at the little man until Harlan seemed to shrink into himself. “Why don’t you tell us about it?” he said in a surprisingly gentle voice.
Harlan’s lips moved silently, finally got out, “You seem to know everything.”
“Why did you decide to kill Knight?”
His lips moved again for a moment without sound, then he managed to say in a dejected tone, “I followed Isobel to the Sheridan when she sneaked out to meet Willard, and through a window of the lounge I saw them together. When Willard suddenly entered the lobby, I went around to the hotel’s main entrance and saw him waiting for an elevator. I took the stairs to the second floor and caught the same elevator on the way up. Willard was surprised to see me, but he gave no sign he knew me because he was there under an assumed name, you see, and I suppose he was afraid I would address him by his right name. He made a motion for me to follow, and when we got off the elevator we went to his room together without exchanging a word. After he had closed the door, he demanded to know why I was following him.”
The little man paused while his eyes stared sightlessly in front of him, seeing not a group of people gathered on a cool front porch, but the interior of a hotel room.
“I didn’t know exactly why I was following him, except that it seemed to be time for a showdown about Isobel. I had things to say about his embezzlement, of course, but I had checked with the bank before closing time and knew the money was safely back in our account, so that discussion could have waited until he returned to the office. I told him I wanted him to stay away from Isobel. He said he loved her, both he and she intended to get divorces, and he meant to marry her. And then he laughed at me.”
He stopped speaking, letting us visualize the rest for ourselves. It was not hard to visualize: a round little fat man confronted by a tall, virile rival who had cheated him, stolen his beautiful wife, and now destroyed his dignity with the final insult of laughter. Momentarily I almost found myself sympathizing with him, but then I remembered he was the same killer who had attempted to murder Fausta.
Fausta remembered it at the same moment. Staring at Jones with the same fascination she might have regarded a freak in a side show, she said, “Now I understand why you looked like you were seeing a ghost the first time we met. You thought you had just poisoned me.”
“Yeah,” I said. “He also thought you’d immediately recognize him as Lancaster’s killer when you walked into his office with me, not knowing the story that you had seen his face was a deliberate plant.”
At a gesture from Warren Day, Hannegan heaved to his feet and curtly motioned for Jones to arise. Numbly the little man got up, then gazed down at his wife in mute appeal.
But Isobel was already regarding him as though he were something without much interest in her past. Her eyes flicked over him indifferently, then settled thoughtfully on the burly figure of Lieutenant Hannegan. You could almost see her filing him away in her mind as a future possibility to while away an evening of boredom. I had a feeling that if she had him alone for a moment, she would issue an invitation for that evening.
Suddenly she smiled brightly up at Harlan. “I suppose you have it arranged for me to inherit everything, haven’t you, dear?”
Fausta forgot she was a lady. Leaving her seat next to me almost as fast as Farmer Cole could have moved, she planted a beautiful roundhouse square in Isohel’s lovely left eye.