“Yes.”
“In a safe place?”
“Yes.”
“I wouldn’t trust that butler too far.”
“I don’t.”
“How did you get it?”
She said, “I went up to Ralph’s office, told his secretary I was going to take the mail home with me so that Ralph could have it when he came in.”
“What did she say?”
“She was completely nonplussed, but there wasn’t very much she could do about it. She couldn’t stand up and say: ‘I don’t think your husband would like you to do that, Mrs. Pressman.’”
Pelly Baxter grinned. “Hardly.”
“She was reluctant enough about it,” Mrs. Pressman said, and then added, grimly: “It’s going to be a pleasure to fire that girl.”
“You think she knew what was in it, and—”
“Of course she knew what was in it,” Mrs. Pressman said. “She’d opened the letter. She hadn’t opened the envelope containing the pictures, thank God.”
“And, knowing that, she handed it to you?” Baxter asked incredulously.
“She did not. She handed me the rest of the mail. She had this carefully put away in a drawer in her desk. So I sent her out on an errand just as I was leaving the office, then doubled back, claimed I’d forgotten my gloves, and opened the drawer in her desk. It was in there.”
“She’d read the letter?”
“Undoubtedly.”
“That’s rather — dangerous.”
“I didn’t say it wasn’t. But it would have been a lot more dangerous to have left that letter there in the office.”
“The detective agency will make a duplicate report?”
She smiled and said; “The detective agency is operated by a realist. If Ralph had lived, Ralph would have paid him. As the situation now stands, I pay him. I think you’ll find the detective agency will be very, very discreet.”
“And the secretary?”
She met his eyes squarely. “We’ll have to silence her.”
“How?”
“I don’t know yet.”
Baxter avoided the insistence of her eyes by groping for a cigarette. “Want one, Sophie?”
“Yes.”
He handed her a cigarette, struck a match, and masked his eyes in a cloud of light blue smoke.
Sophie Pressman said: “I had no idea you were — well, that you’d go that far, Pelly.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Do I need to elaborate?”
Pelly Baxter smoked for several seconds in silence; then he said: “Let’s get this straight, Sophie.”
“I don’t think we need to. It’s a dangerous matter to discuss.”
Baxter might not have heard her. He said speculatively: “You’re a very remarkable personality. There’s something about you which fascinates men. I’m just wondering if it isn’t perhaps because your intervals of fire are followed by such a completely cold detachment.”
“Are you trying to psychoanalyse me?” she asked.
“No,” he said. “Myself.”
“I thought it would swing around to you,” she said, “but go ahead.”
“I would,” Pelly said, choosing his words carefully, “have done almost anything for you — but not that.”
“Not what?”
“Not... well, you know what happened to Ralph.”
She met his eyes steadily. “You don’t have to admit it to me if you don’t want to, Pelly, but let’s not try deceiving each other.”
Baxter said: “All right, let’s be frank. I didn’t know he’d had detectives working for him. I didn’t know anything about those pictures or about that report until you told me over the telephone. At that time I didn’t have any idea where Ralph could be located. So far as I was concerned, Petrie was simply a dot on the map... I never felt more helpless in my life, particularly so when I realized that you weren’t going to take it lying down, but intended to do something about it... However, you didn’t take me into your confidence.
“Then when I heard what had happened, I realized— Well, looking at it from your viewpoint, I consider it was self-defence. Your life, your happiness, your reputation, everything that meant anything to you was at stake. You—”
“Wait a minute, Pelly,” she interrupted, without raising her voice. “Are you trying to tell me that I did it?”
He said, choosing his words carefully: “I’m trying to tell you that I can appreciate what might have prompted you to take any action you did take, and it doesn’t lessen my feeling for you one bit.”
“Why do you do that, Pelly?”
“Do what?”
“Try to wriggle out from under and leave me holding the sack?”
His eyes shifted momentarily, then came back to hers. “Look here, Sophie, are you by any chance going to— Oh, I can’t say it. It sounds too terribly crude.”
“Go ahead and say it, Pelly.”
“Are you,” he blurted, “looking for a fall guy? Did you think that if anything went wrong, I’d — that my love for you — well, you know what I mean.”
She said: “Pelly, my dear, we’re both modern. I hope we’re both realists, despite the fact that we recognize the value of romance. I’m going to be perfectly frank with you. I know that you killed my husband. So far as I’m concerned, it’s not going to make any difference. Frankly, I think it was the only thing to do, but there’s no necessity for you to deceive me on that, and—”
“I tell you I didn’t,” Baxter blurted.
She smiled quiet refutation of his statement.
Baxter got to his feet. His voice was raised somewhat. “Personally,” he said, “I thought you were carrying things too far — altogether too damned far. There certainly were other ways of making a settlement, but—”
“Pelly,” she said with cold finality, “if you think something has gone wrong, and if you’re trying to push me out to the front as—”
“That’s just what I feel you’re trying to do to me.”
Her eyes were cold and hard. “That’s a side of you I hadn’t seen before, Pelly, my dear.”
He was past caring for external appearances now. “Try any of that stuff, my lady,” he said grimly, “and you’ll see a damn sight more of me that you haven’t seen. Don’t think I’m going to take any murder raps for you.”
They were standing now, facing each other, Pelly Baxter’s face angry and just a little frightened. Sophie Pressman was firm, cold, and very sure of herself.
“You know, Pelly,” Sophie said at length, “I could produce proof — if I had to.”
“Sophie, are you completely crazy?”
“I don’t think so, darling.”
“Well, you sound like it.”
She said: “You see, the police called last night to ask me a few questions.”
“Such as where you were at the time of the murder?”
“Don’t be silly, dear. Nothing like that. I’m a grief-stricken widow. They called to ask me if I could throw any light on what had happened, if there was any reason Ralph might have had for committing suicide.”
“What did you tell them?”
“I told them I knew of none, that his domestic life was happy, and his finances were very satisfactory.”
“What else?”
She said: “They showed me the gun and asked me if I could identify it, if I thought it was Ralph’s gun.”
“What did you tell them?”
“That I knew nothing whatever about his guns, that firearms always frightened me, and I had nothing whatever to do with them.”
“Well?”
“But,” she said, “I didn’t tell them that you were quite a collector of weapons and that this gun was yours.”
“Was mine, Sophie?”