I asked Mrs. Talcott, “Mind if I look over the apartment’s layout, so I can get a picture of just what happened last night?”
Her dubious expression suggested that she did mind but, nevertheless, she showed me around. There were five rooms in the shape of an L. If you walked straight ahead after entering the front room from the outside hall, you passed through a dining room and then into a kitchen. If, instead of going straight ahead, you turned right, you found yourself in the card room Mouldy had mentioned. Beyond that was the single bedroom and bath.
In the bedroom, I glanced out the window and noted that there was a drop of not more than six feet to the ground. Since the apartment faced rear, the window looked out over a neat back yard and a row of garages, beyond which was an alley.
When we returned to the front room, I thanked my hostess for her courtesy, seated myself, and asked if she minded cigar smoke. She shook her head, but at the same time frowned and glanced sidewise at Brand, as though mutely inquiring why I did not leave.
Gerald Brand, who sat in an overstuffed chair directly opposite me, smiled reassuringly at her and gave a slight shrug. The gray-faced Deuce Fen was not seated, but leaned idly against a bookcase at one side of the room.
When my cigar was burning satisfactorily, I said, “Mrs. Talcott, I understand from what you told the police, you think Greene actually shot your husband.”
She looked surprised. “But of course he did. How could there be any question about it?”
“Just exactly what happened?”
She frowned again. “I have already told the police, Mr. Moon.”
“I’d appreciate it if you’d tell me also.”
“Just a moment,” Gerald Brand interrupted pleasantly. “This whole thing has upset Minerva terribly, and I see no reason to make her hash it over and over. If there were any possible doubt as to what happened...”
He let his voice trail off; I waited politely for a moment, then repeated, “Just exactly what happened, Mrs. Talcott?”
“See here!” Brand said, reddening slightly.
The whole thing began to bore me, so I stopped trying to be subtle. I’m not very good at it anyway.
“Suppose I tell you what happened, Mrs. Talcott?”
She looked at me wide-eyed. “What do you mean?”
“I mean this was the rawest kind of a frame. Greene not only didn’t shoot your husband, but you know he didn’t. You deliberately set him up as a patsy.”
Gerald Brand rose out of his seat and advanced toward me threateningly. Laying my cigar on an ash stand, I stood up too, and looked down at him from a three-inch height advantage. He stopped far enough away to study my shoulders, glanced at Deuce Fen for reassurance, then stuck out his jaw at me. The bodyguard seemed indifferent to the whole thing, but I noted his rubbery eyes never wavered from my face.
Brand said, “Suppose you explain that remark, Mr. Moon!”
“Sure,” I said. “Minerva picked Mouldy Greene because he was the dumbest guy she could find. She gave him a play and got him over here with the deliberate intention of framing him. Her husband walking in was no surprise. She knew he was coming home, and just about when he’d arrive. And she very adroitly arranged that when he did arrive, Greene’s gun and holster would be hanging from a chair in the front room, Greene would be in the card room and she would be in her bedroom, ostensibly getting into something comfortable.
“Only she wasn’t in the bedroom and she didn’t change into something more comfortable until after her husband was dead. She climbed out the bedroom window, walked around to the apartment’s front entrance and waited for her husband. What explanation she gave for waiting for him outside at two thirty a.m., I don’t know. Maybe she made a practice of it every morning. At any rate, they came in together. Minerva walked over to where Greene’s gun was hanging, borrowed it, and shot her husband. Then she put it back in its holster and walked out the front door again. While Greene was discovering the body, Minerva was climbing back in the bedroom window, stripping off her clothes, and getting into a seductive negligee.”
Minerva Talcott’s face had turned dead white. Gerald Brand’s was scarlet. He took one step toward me and brought a right uppercut from below his knees to my chin.
I moved my head back two inches to let the uppercut whistle past. Then I stepped in with a left hook which set him to trotting backward a half dozen steps. He would have trotted farther, but his knees caught the edge of the overstuffed chair he had left a few moments before and he abruptly sat down.
The moment my fist connected, Deuce Fen moved, or at least part of him moved. His right hand flashed under his armpit. Mine moved too, a bare micro-second faster.
I let him look at the muzzle of my P-38, until he decided to drop his half-drawn gun back into its holster. When his hand returned to his side, I put away the P-38 and grinned at him.
I said cheerfully, “I want to talk to Mrs. Talcott alone. You gentlemen wouldn’t mind calling another time, would you?”
Gerald looked at Deuce, Deuce continued to look at me and his fingers began to caress the edge of his coat.
“You can try it again,” I said, “but this time I’m going to pull the trigger.”
Gerald looked amazed. Rising from his chair, he looked from Deuce to me and then back again, as though not quite willing to believe his bodyguard was refusing to tangle with me.
When the door closed behind them, I picked up my cigar, walked over and seated myself in the chair Gerald Brand had occupied, which left me facing the door, instead of with my back to it. Minerva Talcott watched me with pale fascination.
In a breathless voice she said, “It isn’t true — any of it.”
Before I could make any comment in reply, there was a sharp rap on the door. I again set down my cigar, and waited with my right hand under my coat while Minerva went to answer it.
Warren Day strode in, with a curt greeting for Minerva and a suspicious scowl for me.
Without preamble, he announced, “The guard reported your, conversation with Greene, Moon, and you’re on to something I missed. What is it?”
This sort of thing was what made me respect Warren Day as a cop. He had an airtight case against Mouldy, but the moment he discovered it contained a false note, his mind was wide open. And when he suspected he might have made a mistake, he followed up personally, instead of sitting in his office and sending out a subordinate.
“I’ve got an alternate theory, Inspector,” I said mildly. Then I outlined the case against Minerva.
I said, “Now tell your version again, Mrs. Talcott. Only this time, include a good reason for getting Greene over here.”
Her hands were fumbling nervously and she made two attempts to speak before words came. In a toneless voice, she said, “Your accusation is only partly true. I admit that I got Marmaduke over here deliberately, and I knew my husband would arrive at two thirty. But I only meant for him to get beaten up. It never even occurred to me that Marmaduke might kill him.”
Day said, “You’d better elaborate a little.”
“Henry and I haven’t lived together for two months,” she said wearily. “I wanted a divorce, but he wouldn’t give me one. He was insanely jealous and he made my life hell by creating scenes over my seeing other men. He still had a key to the apartment, and a week ago he unexpectedly walked in and found me with a male friend. He beat the man unmercifully.
“This incident was the last straw. Twice before he beat men friends of mine, but never so seriously. I decided to teach him a lesson. I picked Marmaduke Greene, not because he is dumb, as you suggested, but because he is the strongest man I ever knew. I knew Henry would attempt to beat up any man he found with me, and this time I wanted Henry to end up in a hospital. In a roundabout way, I managed to let Henry learn that he could surprise me with a man if he dropped in about two thirty a.m. Believe me, my faint was genuine when I discovered Marmaduke had killed him, instead of merely beating him up.”