She settled herself in a chair, looking from one to the other with quick, eager, birdlike twists of her head.
Selby leaned forward in his chair. “We’re trying to find out something about why you got in touch with Rose Furman, and just what you know about her.”
“That’s my business.”
“Unfortunately,” Selby said, “events have made it our business.”
“What sort of events?”
Hardwick said, “Suppose you just answer our questions for a while, Mrs. Nutwell, and then we’ll explain to you why we want the information.”
“And suppose I don’t?” she snapped. “Don’t try to browbeat me, young man!”
Selby said, “We’re not here out of idle curiosity, Mrs. Nutwell.”
“I s’pose that’s right. It ain’t idle, but it’s curiosity just the same.”
There was silence for several seconds.
“Well,” she demanded truculently.
Selby said patiently, “We’d like to know about why you hired Rose Furman.”
“Who says I hired her?”
“We have reason to think you did.”
“Well, if she’s been talking, I’ll certainly do something about that.”
“She hasn’t been talking,” Selby said.
“Well, it looks mighty queer to me. Can’t blame a body for being suspicious. Here you folks come up here and start trampling all over me. What’s wrong with hiring a detective? S’pose I did? What’s a detective for?”
“That’s what we’d like to know,” Selby said.
“Find out things for a body, I guess. Guess a person has a right to get information.”
Selby nodded.
“Why do they let detectives carry on their profession if it’s illegal to hire them?”
“It isn’t,” Selby reassured her, “but for certain reasons we’re trying to check up on Rose Furman.”
“What reasons?”
Selby held the gray eyes. “Rose Furman is dead.”
The woman in the chair gave a quick, convulsive start. “What’s that you say?”
“She’s dead.”
“Young man, you aren’t lying to me?”
“I’m telling you the truth.”
“How’d she die?”
“She was murdered.”
“Who killed her?”
“That’s what we’re trying to find out.”
“Sounds like a cock-and-bull story to me.”
There was another interval of silence. Hardwick started to say something but Selby flashed him a warning glance, and the deputy lapsed into silence.
“Well, what do you want to know?” Mrs. Nutwell demanded again.
“How you happened to hire her, and what you know about her.”
“Well, under the circumstances, looks as though you might be entitled to ask a question or two. I hired her on account of my brother.”
“What about your brother?”
“That’s what I’m trying to find out.”
“How did you happen to hire her?”
“Well, I looked around a little bit. I wanted to get some private detective I could trust. I’d heard a lot about them. Some of them are good, some of them ain’t worth a snap of your finger. Some of them string you along, make all sorts of reports aimed to keep you spending money until they bleed you white. Didn’t want that kind. Wanted someone that would do the job quietly and competently. That’s the trouble with people nowadays. They just ain’t competent. Can’t get anybody to dig in and really do a job.”
Selby nodded. “And how did you happen to find Rose Furman?”
“Friend of mine told me about her. She doesn’t send in reports. Sends a telegram once in a while, but gets results. She’s quiet and keeps in the background. Doesn’t want a lot of people knowing she’s a detective. Just has a certain trade and for the most part handles business for women. Leastwise, that’s what I found out about her when I investigated and, believe me, I did investigate. Never was a person to go around throwing money to the birdies, giving it to people I didn’t know anything about. They’ll fool you, all of them.”
“So you looked her up pretty carefully?”
“You bet I did.”
“Now what was there about your brother that...”
“My brother died,” she interrupted. “I didn’t like what they said about the way he died. Didn’t sound right to me. He was my younger brother, Carl Remerton. I’m a widow. Married Barker Nutwell when I was eighteen but he died six or seven years ago. My brother Carl’s wife also died. We always were pretty close. He understood me and I understood him. Seven years younger than I am. Wanted to be a playboy after his wife died. Told him he was a damned fool. Leave that gallivanting around to the younger folks.
“Well, he’d worked hard all his life. No play. Just keeping his nose pushed right down against the grindstone all the time. Made money, but what good did it do him? Made lots of money. People with money aren’t happy. Trouble with having money is you get to depend on money. People who are happy are the ones who have friends.
“When you get money, everyone wants to take it away from you. You have to stand guard over it all the time. Get a little bit careless with it, and you’re right back to where you were in the first place, poor as a church-mouse. Put in all of your time trying to stand between people and your money, and what does it get you? Nothing but ulcers and blood pressure. But I couldn’t talk to Carl. He wouldn’t listen. He was a worker, that boy. Certainly did dig in and work all his life — partially due to his wife. Ain’t going to say anything against her. Made up my mind I wouldn’t when he married, and I never did, and ain’t going to begin now.”
She clamped her lips in a firm straight line and glared at her visitors in grim silence.
“Yes, I can understand,” Selby said, reassuringly, “but, without saying anything against his wife, you can tell us that after she died your brother began to take life a little easier.”
“Of course he did. You should have seen the change in him. Of course he missed her and he did a little grieving but actually it was just like a weight had dropped off of him. Made a big change in him — too much of a change. He never could do things by halves. He started playing just like he worked.”
“Women?” Selby asked.
“How do I know,” she snapped. “I didn’t go spying on him.”
Selby was contritely silent, and, after a moment, she said, “Carl always loved to play poker, gamble, bet on the horses, things like that. He wanted life, gaiety, wanted to go around to night clubs, watch them dance. Get out there on the floor and do a right smart bit of dancing himself. Foolish for a man his age to do it. He’d just turned sixty. A man had ought to start taking care of himself then. Your heart gets tired. Even if it doesn’t tell you about it, it’s still tired. Go pouring a lot more work on it, dancing around a crowded floor in air that’s loaded with alcohol, perfume and tobacco, and there ain’t any good going to come of it. Well, that’s what he wanted, and that’s what he got.”
“Did he have any children?”
“Not a chick. I’m his only living relative.”
“And therefore you inherited the money?” Selby asked.
“What do you mean by that?”
“I just asked.”
“Of course I did. That is, I will. What about it?”
“Nothing.”
“All right, then, nothing.”
“Can you tell me more about your brother’s death?”
“He went to this dude ranch up in Windrift, Montana, and I don’t know what he was doing up there. Never tried to find out. Never cared. I suppose he was frolicking around and trying to have a good time, and if that’s the way he wanted things, why that’s the way he wanted them, and that’s that.