Dorothy sobbed: I want to go home to Mamma.
Larry said not very eagerly: I'll be glad to take you home if . .
Dorothy said she wanted to go. Nora fussed over her, but did not try to talk her out of going. Larry, trying not to look too unwilling, found his hat and coat. He and Dorothy left.
Nora shut the door behind them and leaned against it. Explain that to me, Mr. Charalambides, she said.
I shook my head.
She sat on the sofa beside me. Now out with it. If you skip a single word, I'll
I'd have to have a drink before I could do any talking.
She cursed me and brought me a drink. Has he confessed?
Why should he? You can't plead guilty of murder in the first degree. There were too many murdersand at least two of them were too obviously done in cold bloodfor the District Attorney to let him plead guilty of second-degree murder. There's nothing for him to do but fight it out.
But he did commit them?
Sure.
She pushed my glass down from my mouth. Stop stalling and tell me about it.
Well, it figures out that he and Julia had been gypping Wynant for some time. He'd dropped a lot of money in the market and he'd found out about her pastas Morelli hintedand the pair of them teamed up on the old man. We're sicking accountants on Macaulay's books and Wynant's and shouldn't have much trouble tracing some of the loot from one to the other.
Then you don't know positively that he was robbing Wynant?
Sure we know. It doesn't click any other way. The chances are Wynant was going away on a trip the 3rd of October, because he did draw five thousand dollars out of the bank in cash, but he didn't close up his shop and give up his apartment. That was done by Macaulay a few days later. Wynant was killed at Macaulay's in Scarsdale on the night of the 3rd. We know that because on the morning of the 4th, when Macaulay's cook, who slept at home, came to work, Macaulay met her at the door with some kind of trumped-up complaint and two weeks' wages and fired her on the spot, not letting her in the house to find any corpses or bloodstains.
How did you find that out? Don't skip details.
Ordinary routine. Naturally after we grabbed him we went to his office and house to see what we could find outyou know, where-were-youon-the-night-of-June-6, 1894-stuffand the present cook said she'd only been working for him since the 8th of October, and that led to that. We also found a table with a very faint trace of what we hope is human blood not quite scrubbed out. The scientific boys are making shavings of it now to see if they can soak out any results for us. (It turned out to be beef blood.)
Then you're not sure he
Stop saying that. Of course we're sure. That's the only way it clicks. Wynant had found out that Julia and Macaulay were gypping him and also thought, rightly or wrongly, that Julia and Macaulay were cheating on himand we know he was jealousso he went up there to confront him with whatever proof he had, and Macaulay, with prison looking him in the face, killed the old man. Now don't say we're not sure. It doesn't make any sense otherwise. Well, there he is with a corpse, one of the harder things to get rid of. Can I stop to take a swallow of whisky?
Just one, Nora said. But this is just a theory, isn't it?
Call it any name you like. It's good enough for me.
But I thought everybody was supposed to be considered innocent until they were proved guilty and if there was any reasonable doubt, they
That's for juries, not detectives. You find the guy you think did the murder and you slam him in the can and let everybody know you think he's guilty and put his picture all over newspapers, and the District Attorney builds up the best theory he can on what information you've got and meanwhile you pick up additional details here and there, and people who recognize his picture in the paperas well as people who'd think he was innocent if you hadn't arrested himcome in and tell you things about him and presently you've got him sitting on the electric chair. (Two days later a woman in Brooklyn identified Macaulay as a George Foley who for the past three months had been renting an apartment from her.)
But that seems so loose.
When murders are committed by mathematics, I said, you can solve them by mathematics. Most of them aren't and this one wasn't. I don't want to go against your idea of what's right and wrong, but when I say he probably dissected the body so he could carry it into town in bags I'm only saying what seems most probable. That would be on the 6th of October or later, because it wasn't until then that he laid off the two mechanics Wynant had working in the shopPrentice and McNaughton and shut it up. So he buried Wynant under the floor, buried him with a fat man's clothes and a lame man's stick and a belt marked D. W. Q., all arranged so they wouldn't get too much of the limeor whatever he used to eat off the dead man's features and fleshon them, and he re-cemented the floor over the grave. Between police routine and publicity we've got more than a fair chance of finding out where he bought or otherwise got the clothes and stick and the cement. (We traced the cement to him laterhe had bought it from a coal and wood dealer uptownbut had no luck with the other things.)
I hope so, she said, not too hopefully.
So now that's taken care of. By renewing the lease on the shop and keeping it vacantsupposedly waiting for Wynant to returnhe can make surereasonably surethat nobody will discover the grave, and if it is accidentally discovered, then fat Mr. D. W. Q.by that time Wynant's bones would be pretty bare and you can't tell whether a man was thin or fat by his skeletonwas murdered by Wynant, which explains why Wynant has made himself scarce. That taken care of, Macaulay forges the power of attorney and, with Julia's help, settles down to the business of gradually transferring the late Clyde's money to themselves. Now I'm going theoretical again. Julia doesn't like murder, and she's frightened, and he's not too sure she won't weaken on him. That's why he makes her break with Morelligiving Wynant's jealousy as an excuse. He's afraid she might confide to Morelli in a weak moment and, as the time draws near for her still closer friend, Face Peppler, to get out of prison, he gets more and more worried. He's been safe there as long as Face stayed in, because she's not likely to put anything dangerous in a letter that has to pass through the warden's hands, but now ... Well, he starts to plan, and then all hell breaks loose. Mimi and her children arrive and start hunting for Wynant and I come to town and am in touch with them and he thinks I'm helping them. He decides to play safe on Julia by putting her out of the way. Like it so far?
Yes, but ...
It gets worse as it goes along, I assured her. On his way here for lunch that day he stops and phones his office, pretending he's Wynant, and making that appointment at the Plaza, the idea being to establish Wynant's presence in town. When he leaves here he goes to the Plaza and asks people if they've seen Wynant, to make that plausible, and for the same reason phones his office to ask if any further word has come from Wynant, and phones Julia. She tells him she's expecting Mimi and she tells him Mimi thought she was lying when she said she didn't know where Wynant was, and Julia probably sounds pretty frightened. So he decides he's got to beat Mimi to the interview and he does. He beats it over there and kills her. He's a terrible shot. I saw him shoot during the war. It's likely he missed her with the first shot, the one that hit the telephone, and didn't succeed in killing her right away with the other four, but he probably thought she was dead, and, anyhow, he had to get out before Mimi arrived, so he dropped the piece of Wynant's chain that he had brought along as a clincherand his having saved that for three months makes it look as if he'd intended killing her from the beginningand scoots over to the engineer Hermann's office, where he takes advantage of the breaks and fixes himself up with an alibi. The two things he doesn't expectcouldn't very well have foreseenare that Nunheim, hanging around trying to get at the girl, had seen him leave her apartmentmay even have heard the shotsand that Mimi, with blackmail in her heart, was going to conceal the chain for use in shaking down her exhusband. That's why he had to go down to Philadelphia and send me that wire and the letter to himself and one to Aunt Alice laterif Mimi thinks Wynant's throwing suspicion on her she'll get mad enough to give the police the evidence she's got against him. Her desire to hurt Jorgensen nearly gummed that up, though. Macaulay, by the way, knew Jorgensen was Kelterman. Right after he killed Wynant he had detectives look Mimi and her family up in Europetheir interest in the estate made them potentially dangerousand the detectives found out who Jorgensen was. We found the reports in Macaulay's files. He pretended he was getting the information for Wynant, of course. Then he started worrying about me, about my not thinking Wynant guilty and