Nick: “Who is Pedro?”
Nora: “You remember. Pedro Dominges — used to be Papa’s gardener.”
Nick says, “Oh, yes,” doubtfully, looking at Pedro again. Pedro is a lanky Portuguese of fifty-five, with a pleasant, swarthy face and a gray handlebar mustache. Nick addresses the butler, “Phone the police, Peters.” Then he turns to discover that the man who opened the door has tiptoed past the corpse and is now going down the steps to the street. “Wait a minute,” Nick calls. The man turns around on the bottom step and says very earnestly, “Listen, I…, I… This kind of thing upsets me. I got to go home and lay down.”
Nick looks at the man without saying anything, and the man reluctantly comes back up the steps complaining, “All right, brother, but you’re going to have a sick man on your hands.”
A little man, obviously a crook of some sort, plucks at Nick’s elbow and whines, “You got to let me out, Nick. You know I’m in no spot to be messing with coppers right now.”
Nick: “You should have thought of that before you shot him.”
The little man jumps as if he had been kicked.
During this scene a crowd has been gradually assembling in the street around the door: first a grocer’s delivery boy, then a taxi driver, pedestrians, etc. Now a policeman pushes his way through the crowd, saying, “What’s going on here?” and comes up the steps. He salutes Nick respectfully and says, “How do you do, Mr. Charles? Glad to see you back,” then sees the dead man and goggles at him.
Nick: “We called in.”
The policeman goes down the steps and begins to push the crowd around, growling, “Get back there! Get back there!” In the distance a police siren can be heard.
Indoors, a few minutes later, Lieutenant Abrams of the police homicide detail — who looks somewhat like an older version of Arthur Caesar — is saying to Nora, “You’re sure of the identification, Mrs. Charles? He’s the Pedro Dominges that used to be your gardener?”
Nora: “Absolutely sure.”
Abrams: “How long ago was that?”
Nora: "Six years at least. He left a little before my father died.”
Abrams: “Why’d he leave?”
Nora: “I don’t know.”
Abrams: “Ever see him since?”
Nora: “No.”
Abrams: “What did he want here?”
Nora: “I don’t know. I—”
Abrams: “All right. Thanks.” He speaks to one of his men: “See what you can get.” The man goes to a phone in another room. (In this scene, the impression to be conveyed is that Abrams has already asked his preliminary questions and is now patiently going over the same ground again, checking up, filling in details.)
Abrams turns to the guests: “And none of you admit you know him, huh?” Several of them shake their heads, the others remain quiet.
Abrams: “And none of you know a Miss Selma Young?”
There is the same response.
Abrams: “All right.” Then, more sharply: “Mullen, have you remembered anything else?”
The man who had opened the door runs his tongue over his lips and says, “No, sir. It’s just like I told you. I went to the door when it rang, thinking it was maybe some more guests, or maybe them” — nodding at Nick and Nora — “and then there was the shots and he kind of gasped what sounded to me like ‘Mees Selma Young’ and he fell down dead like that. I guess there was an automobile passing maybe — I don’t know.”
Abrams, aside to Nick: “Who is he?”
Nick: “Search me.”
Abrams to Mullen: “Who are you? What were you doing here?”
Mullen, hesitantly: “I come to see about buying a puppy and somebody give me a drink and—” His face lights up and he says with enthusiasm, “It was a swell party. I never—”
Abrams interrupts him: “What are you doing answering the doorbell if you just chiseled in?”
Mullen, sheepishly: “Well, I guess I had a few drinks and was kind of entering in the spirit of the thing.”
Abrams addresses one of his men: “Take good-time Charlie out to where he says he lives and works and find out about him.” The man takes Mullen and goes out.
In another room, the detective at the phone is saying, “Right, Mack. I got it.” He hangs up. As he reaches the door, the phone rings. He glances around, goes softly back to it.
In the hallway, the butler answers the phone: “Mr. Charles’s residence… Yes, Mrs. Landis… Yes, ma’am.” He goes into the room where the others are and speaks aside to Nora: “Mrs. Landis is on the telephone, ma’am.”
Nora goes to the phone, says, “Hello, Selma. How are you, dear?”
Selma, in hat and street clothes, her face wild, cries hysterically: “Nora, you and Nick have simply got to come tonight! Something terrible has happened! I don’t know what to… I’ll kill myself if… You’ve got to! If you don’t, I’ll—” She breaks off as she sees Aunt Katherine standing in the doorway looking sternly at her. Aunt Katherine is very old but still bigboned and powerful, with a grim, iron-jawed face. She, too, is in hat and street clothes, and she leans on a thick cane. Selma catches her breath in a sob and says weakly, “Please come.”
Nora, alarmed: “Certainly we’ll come, dear. We’ll do—”
Selma says hastily, “Thanks,” and hangs up, avoiding Aunt Katherine’s eyes. Aunt Katherine, not taking her eyes from Selma, puts out a hand and rings a bell, saying when a servant comes in, “A glass of water.” Both women remain as they are in silence until the servant returns with the water. Then Aunt Katherine takes the water from the servant, takes a tablet from a small bottle in her own handbag, and with water in one hand, tablet in the other, goes to Selma and says, “Take this and lie down until time for dinner.”
Selma objects timidly: “No, Aunt Katherine, please. I’m all right. I’ll be quite all right.”
Aunt Katherine: “Do as I say — or I shall call Dr. Kammer.”
Selma slowly takes the tablet and water.
The detective at Nick’s who has been listening on the extension quickly puts down the phone and, re# turning to the room where the others are, calls Abrams aside and whispers into his ear, telling him what he overheard. While this is going on, Nora returns and tells Nick, “You’re in for it, my boy. I promised Selma we’d come to Aunt Katherine’s for dinner tonight. I had to. She’s so upset she—”
Nick: “That means outside of putting up with the rest of your family, we’ll have to listen to her troubles with Robert. I won’t—”
Nora, coaxingly: “But you like Selma.”
Nick: “Not that much.”
Nora: “Please, Nicky.”
Nick: “I won’t go sober.”
Nora pats his cheek: “You’re a darling.”
Abrams comes back from his whispered conference with the other detective and says, “Mrs. Charles, I’ll have to ask you who you were talking to on the phone.”
Nora, puzzled: “My cousin, Selma Landis.”
Abrams: “She married?”
Nora: “Yes.”
Abrams: “What was her last name before she was married?”
Nora: “Forrest, the same as mine.”
Abrams: “She ever go by the name of Young?”
Nora: “Why no! Surely you don’t think—” She looks at Nick.
Abrams: “What was she so excited about?”
Nora, indignantly: “You listened?”
Abrams, patiently: “We’re policemen, Mrs. Charles, and a man’s been killed here. We got to try to find out what goes on the best way we can. Now, is there any connection between what she was saying and what happened here?”
Nora: “Of course not It’s probably her husband.”
Abrams: “You mean this fellow that was killed?”
Nick: “There’s a thought!” He asks Nora solemnly, “Do you suppose Selma was ever married to Pedro?”