Rex Stout - Bad for Business

“Yes, sir.”

“Good,” Damon folded his arms. “Go ahead, Fox.”

Fox moved to one side of the table, faced the little audience, and spoke in a quiet and even pleasant tone. “I’m going to ask you only about things I already know, and for the most part things you’ve already told me, so there really shouldn’t be much to it. Also, I’ll make it brief if you will. Miss Murphy; did you go to Miss Yates’s apartment around 7:30 Tuesday evening to discuss something with her?”

Carrie Murphy nodded, and, as Fox waited, said, “Yes,” in a low tone.

“Did she call someone on the phone?”

“Yes.”

“Whom did she call and at what time?”

“Mr. Arthur Tingley. It was eight o’clock, just a minute or two before.”

“At his home or his office?”

“At his office. She tried his home first, but he wasn’t there, so she called here and got him.”

They were all looking at Carrie, and Philip was staring at her in unconcealed astonishment. Fox went on:

“Did you talk to Tingley yourself? Did you hear his voice?”

“No, but it was him. What she said — it must have been him.”

Fox’s eyes moved. “Miss Yates. Is Miss Murphy’s statement correct?”

“It is,” said Miss Yates firmly.

“You recognized Tingley’s voice?”

“Certainly. I’ve been hearing it all my life—”

“Of course you have. Thanks. Mr. Philip Tingley; on Tuesday afternoon did your father — let’s just say father, shall we? — did he ask you to come here at 7:30 that evening?”

“Yes!” Phil said, loudly and aggressively.

“For what purpose?”

“To have — to discuss something with him and that man.” Phil pointed with a long bony rigid finger. “Guthrie Judd.”

“Did you come?”

“Yes, but not at 7:30. I was ten minutes late.”

“Did you enter the building and come to this room?”

“Yes! And I saw Arthur Tingley on the floor behind the screen, dead, and I saw Amy Duncan there, too, unconscious, and I felt her pulse and—”

“Of course. Naturally, being human, you displayed humanity. Are you sure Arthur Tingley was dead?”

“I am. If you had seen him—”

“I did see him. His throat had been cut?”

“Yes, and the blood had spread on the floor until it was only a few inches away from Amy’s face—”

“Thank you,” Fox said curtly, and moved his eyes. “Mr. Leonard Cliff. Did you follow Amy Duncan from her apartment to this building on Tuesday evening?”

Amy’s head jerked sidewise. Cliff’s remained stationary. He spoke in a muffled tone: “I did, as I told you.”

“What time did you arrive?”

“About ten minutes after seven.”

“Miss Duncan entered this building?”

“Yes.”

“What did you do from then until eleven minutes after eight, when she came out again?”

“I stood in the entrance of the driveway tunnel. It was raining.”

“Did you see Philip Tingley arrive at 7:40?”

“I did, and I saw him come out again seven or eight minutes later.”

“Did you see anyone else arrive?”

“Yes, before that. At 7:30 a limousine drove up and stopped directly in front, and a man got out and crossed the sidewalk to the entrance with the driver holding an umbrella over him.”

“Wait a minute!” Inspector Damon said peremptorily, stepping forward. His eyes met Fox’s. “We’ll stop this right here.” He faced Cliff and snapped at him. “Did you enter the building?”

“No.”

“What were you doing here? Why did you follow Miss Duncan?”

Cliff’s mouth opened and shut. He looked appealingly at Fox.

Fox plucked at Damon’s sleeve. “Inspector, please. This is on the record, you know, and we don’t need that detail. Take my word for it. Or get it later. It’ll keep— Mr. Cliff, what was the registration number on the limousine?”

“GJ55.”

“And who was the man who got out and entered this building?”

“To the best of my belief, it was Guthrie Judd. It was dark and rainy and I wasn’t able—”

“We understand that. How long did he stay in the building?”

“Five minutes. Between four and six minutes.”

“He came out and got in the limousine and it drove off?”

“Yes.”

Fox nodded, and shifted his gaze. “Mr. Guthrie Judd.”

The two pairs of eyes met in mid-air like gamecocks leaping for the thrust of battle, but then Fox smiled at him.

“Well, sir,” Fox said, “it looks as if we need you for a referee. Miss Yates says Tingley was alive at eight o’clock, and Philip says he was dead at 7:40. We’d like to hear from you what shape he was in at 7:30. You were inside the building five minutes. You can of course say that you didn’t come upstairs, or that you came to this room and found it empty, but we wouldn’t believe you, and neither would a judge or jury. What may be more to the point in your case, nor would ten million newspaper readers.”

There was movement in the muscles of Judd’s jaw.

“You realize,” Fox went on, “that I am not bound, as the law officers are, to protect the embarrassing secrets of prominent people from the public curiosity. And probably newspaper readers would be even more interested in the contents of that box with GJ on it than in your brief visit here Tuesday evening. Not only the story itself, which is full of human interest, but those shoes! A pair of baby shoes—”

“He was dead,” said Judd, biting the words off.

“Ah! Then you did come up to this room?”

“Yes. He was on the floor with his throat cut. Near him was a young woman I had never seen, unconscious. I was in the room less than a minute. I had come through all the doors to this room with some hesitation, because I had heard no sound and had stopped in the anteroom to call Tingley’s name, and had got no response. I returned — cautiously. Under the circumstances.”

Fox nodded. “I suppose that could have taken five minutes. I am not a policeman, and I’m certainly not the district attorney, but I think it is quite likely that you will never be under the necessity of telling this story in a courtroom. They won’t want to inconvenience you. However, in the event that a subpoena takes you to the witness stand, are you prepared to swear to the truth of what you have just said?”

“I am.”

“Thank you very much.” Fox’s gaze swept an arc to include the others. “You see what we’re up against. According to Miss Yates, Tingley was alive at eight o’clock, and according to Philip and Judd, he couldn’t have been.” His gaze suddenly fixed. “Are you still positive it was Tingley you talked to, Miss Yates?”

She met his eyes squarely. “I am.” Her voice was perfectly controlled. “I don’t say they’re lying. I don’t know. I only know if it was someone imitating Arthur Tingley’s voice, I’ve never heard anything to equal it.”

“You still think it was him.”

“I do.”

“Why did you tell me — on Wednesday, there in the sauce room — why did you tell me that when you got home Tuesday evening you stood your umbrella in the bathtub to drain?”

“Because I—”

She stopped, and it was easy to tell from her face what happened. An alarm had sounded. Some nerve band had carried the lightning message: “Look out!” Any eye might have seen it, and to a trained eye it was so patent that Inspector Damon emitted a little growl and involuntarily straightened his shoulders. All were looking at her.

“Why,” she asked, her soprano voice a shade thinner than it had been, but quite composed, “did I say that? I don’t remember it.”

“I do,” Fox declared. “The reason I bring it up, you also told me you left here at a quarter past six and went straight home, which is only a five-minute walk. It didn’t start raining that evening until three minutes to seven, so I wondered why your umbrella needed draining at 6:20.”