Tweak the Devil's Nose

by Deming, Richard

  Apparently the partition between the two rooms was thin, for the moment I opened the door I could hear the murmur of conversation through the wall. Although muffled, I could make out the words without difficulty.

  A husky voice I at first thought was that of a man, but almost immediately identified as that of Mrs. Knight, was saying, “I don’t see that Willard’s borrowing has any bearing on the subject, since he returned every cent. It was an equal partnership, wasn’t it? So why should I accept less than half the firm’s value as estimated by an independent appraiser?”

  A suave voice I assumed belonged to the lawyer mentioned by Isobel began an explanation. “The total estimated worth of a business of this nature has to be based on two factors, Mrs. Knight. There is first the intrinsic value of office fixtures and equipment, monies and securities belonging to the firm. Things upon which an accurate monetary value may be fixed. But the other factor is intangible. It consists of customer lists, the firm’s reputation in financial circles, the sales ability of firm members and so on. In this case a large part of this intangible value rests on the last item, the sales ability of the members. Now your husband was an excellent salesman, but obviously this ceased to be an asset to the firm the moment he passed away.”

  “How about the customer list?” Mrs. Knight asked sullenly. “Didn’t Willard build that up as much as you did?”

  Apparently this was addressed to Harlan Jones, for after clearing his throat, Jones’s voice said, “Yes, of course. It’s only fair to concede that.”

  “But on the other hand,” the lawyer smoothly interjected, “your husband’s — ah — borrowing firm funds undoubtedly will have some adverse effect on the firm’s business. Rumors certainly will spread, particularly since a rival investment house knows of the — ah — borrowing. And while to some extent these rumors may be offset by the general knowledge that the borrower is no longer active in the firm, you must concede this would not be the case were Mr. Knight still alive. Therefore I think it hardly would be fair to consider the firm’s reputation among the intangibles in arriving at an estimated value.”

  Obviously the man was Harlan Jones’s lawyer instead of Mrs. Knight’s, I thought. And he was good. At least the short snatch of conversation I overheard had me convinced Jones should be allowed to buy out his partner’s interest for less than half the appraised value of the business.

  That is, it had me convinced while I was listening. After returning to the reception room with a straight-backed chair I found in Knight’s office, and thinking over what I had heard, I retained only my first opinion: that the lawyer was good. When you delved beneath his plausible arguments, the fact remained that Knight and Jones had owned equal interest in the business. And if Jones wanted to buy out Knight’s heir, the fairest price was half the value of the business.

  Then another thought occurred to me. Why was the division of the business being rushed, and who was doing the rushing, Jones or Mrs. Knight? Willard Knight had been dead less than forty-eight hours. As a matter of fact, due to the delay attendant on an autopsy, I imagined he had not yet even had a funeral. Who was so eager to divide up the business that the matter could not wait until Knight was buried?

  21

  I said to Isobel, “You didn’t mention Mrs. Knight was in there with your husband.”

  Her eyebrows raised. “Should I have?” Then she asked curiously, “How did you know she was?”

  “Thin walls,” I said.

  Warren Day said restlessly, “How long are we going to have to wait, Miss?”

  The question was addressed to Matilda, who said, “I’m sure it won’t be long, officer. I buzzed Mr. Jones that you were here.”

  At that moment Harlan Jones opened his office door to glance out, his eyes widened when he spotted the inspector and he hurried over to him. “I had no idea it was you waiting, sir,” he said, nervously shaking Day’s hand. “Miss Graves merely announced a policeman.”

  Jones smiled skittishly at Fausta, nodded to me and gave a preoccupied greeting to his wife. “I’m afraid I’ll be tied up for some time, Inspector,” he went on. “Suppose we step into my ex-partner’s office to go over what I’ve been able to unearth. My other visitors can wait in mine.”

  Isobel said, “While you’re here, dear …”

  “Oh, yes,” Jones said. Self-consciously, while we all looked on, he extracted what looked like two fifties from his wallet and handed the bills to his wife.

  Jones moved toward Knight’s office with the inspector following, but when I rose to trail along, Isobel said, “Can you spare a minute, Manny?”

  Stopping, I said, “Sure.”

  Fausta asked sweetly, “Want me to step outside?”

  “That won’t be necessary,” Isobel said in an equally sweet tone. “Manny and I have already covered all we need to say to each other in private.”

  Fausta’s eyes developed a glitter which decided me to move my good shin out of kicking range. I went back to my chair.

  Isobel asked me, “Why did you think it funny I did not mention the grieving widow was closeted with my husband and his lawyer?”

  “I didn’t think it funny. I merely commented.”

  “You said thin walls. Do you know what they’re talking about?”

  “Who? Your husband and the inspector?”

  She said impatiently, “Harlan and Mrs. Knight and the lawyer.”

  “Yes.”

  She waited a moment, and when I failed to elaborate, asked, “Well, what?”

  “Why?”

  She bit her lip, glanced sidewise at Fausta and said, “Has it anything to do with what we were discussing the other day?”

  Suddenly I saw the light. She was afraid her husband and Mrs. Knight were comparing notes about Willard Knight’s “board meetings,” and with her husband’s lawyer in on the conference, naturally she was upset.

  Rising, I said, “Relax, Isobel. They’re discussing what Mrs. Knight should receive for her husband’s share of the business. Apparently your husband wants to buy her out.”

  She looked surprised. “But the funeral hasn’t even been held yet! It’s not until tomorrow.” Then her expression turned scornful. “She was always an unfeeling woman. Not a drop of sympathy or understanding in her veins. No wonder Willard searched elsewhere …” Abruptly she stopped and glanced at Fausta again.

  I said in a bored tone, “I know. His wife didn’t understand him.”

  I was moving toward the room containing the inspector and Harlan Jones when Isobel said to my back, “Well, she didn’t. She didn’t even show sympathy when she learned Willard was facing ruin because of what that Mr. Lancaster had found out, and might even have to go to jail. She just berated him for borrowing the money.”

  My hand was on the knob of Knight’s office door before Isobel’s remark completely penetrated. Releasing the knob, I retraced my steps and sat down again.

  To Fausta I said, “Isobel and I have some more confidential things to say to each other. Go talk to Miss Graves.”

  Curiously Fausta examined the expression on my face, decided it was no time for games, and followed orders without even her usual pretense of jealousy.

  When she was out of earshot, I said, “Now just repeat that last remark, Isobel.”

  “About Willard’s wife bawling him out?” I nodded.

  Isobel looked puzzled. “She just bawled him out, that’s all.”

  “For borrowing money to speculate?”

  “Well, for getting caught at it. Personally I think she wouldn’t even have objected if Willard had made a killing. She was just mad over the jam he was in, not about the moral issue.”

  “I see,” I said. “And when did this bawling out take place?”

  “The evening he was at my house. That is, just before he got to my house. Willard told me he made a clean breast of everything when he got home from work, and she raised so much Cain, he told her he had a board meeting and walked out without even eating dinner.”

  “He
told her everything?” I asked carefully. “About borrowing seventy thousand dollars to buy Ilco Utilities, about Lancaster threatening to knock the props from under Ilco with his public announcement, and about his argument with Lancaster?”

  “Well,” she hedged, “he told her all about the jam he was in. He didn’t tell me the details. I learned them since from Harlan and you. Willard just told me he was in a stock-market jam, had told his wife the whole story, and instead of trying to be helpful, she jumped all over him. You can see from that what kind of woman she is. Had she been a halfway adequate wife, she would never have driven her husband to seek sympathy and understanding from another woman.”

  Had Isobel’s revelation not opened an entirely new avenue of exploration, I might have been amused by the self-righteous manner in which she criticized another woman’s marital sufficiency. But my mind was too busy to linger over pot-and-kettle philosophy.

  I said, “Pardon me,” rose and went into Willard Knight’s office.

  I found the Inspector and Jones craning over a typed sheet lying on the desk between them. The inspector was listening without much interest as Jones explained each item listed on the sheet. I gathered it was a complete list of Willard Knight’s borrowings, with dates of both the borrowings and returns, and amounts involved.

  I interrupted to say, “Let that ride awhile, Inspector. I just uncovered something more urgent.”

  Day looked up at me with a scowl.

  Conscious of the thin partition, which would allow Mrs. Knight in the other office to hear every word I said in a normal tone, I moved close to the inspector and dropped my voice to a near whisper. “Remember what a point Mrs. Knight made of not knowing what her husband saw in the paper? I just learned she knew all about Knight’s jam, including his argument with Lancaster.”

  The inspector’s scowl faded to a blank look. “How’d you find that out?”

  I opened my mouth to explain, then suddenly realized I could not in front of Jones without disclosing that while he was in Kansas City, Isobel and Knight had spent the evening together.

  “Something Fausta happened to say,” I improvised. “I’ll explain it later. Since Mrs. Knight is right next door, suppose we ask her a few questions.”

  Jones said, “You mean interrupt our conference?” and when the inspector merely gave him an irritated look, hastily added, “Not that I mind for myself. But my lawyer is a busy man and — ”

  “So am I,” Day said bluntly. “Moon, bring that woman in here.”

  “Sure, Inspector.” I started for the door, stopped again and asked Jones, “Whose idea was this conference between you and Mrs. Knight?”

  Jones looked puzzled. “What do you mean?”

  I said, “A little while ago I stepped in here to borrow a chair. Your walls aren’t very thick and I couldn’t help overhearing the discussion next door. It struck me the division of the business was being somewhat rushed inasmuch as your partner hasn’t even been buried yet. I just wondered who was doing the rushing.”

  “I see,” Jones said slowly. “It is a trifle untimely, isn’t it? But Mrs. Knight insisted. I certainly am in no hurry. As a matter of fact I would prefer some delay, as I am going to have to borrow a good portion of what it will take to buy her out. I understand she is in a hurry because she plans to leave town immediately after the funeral. She mentioned something about living with a sister in California.”

  22

  I think Harlan Jones’s lawyer intended to wax a little pompous about his time being valuable when we intruded on his conference, but one snarl from Warren Day decided him not even to open his mouth. With a definite lead to follow, the inspector became overbearingly dictatorial. He not only cowed the lawyer into submission, he highhandedly ordered Harlan Jones to stay out of his own office while Mrs. Knight was being questioned, apparently to forestall possible eavesdropping through the thin partition.

  Denied access to his work sanctum, Harlan decided to leave the office temporarily with his wife and his lawyer. From the ruffled appearances of the two men, I suspect they headed for the nearest bar.

  Leaving Fausta in the company of Matilda Graves, we ushered Mrs. Knight into her deceased husband’s office and closed the door. The inspector ensconced himself behind the dead man’s desk, summarily waved the widow into the lone remaining guest chair, and left me standing.

  After getting the woman in the proper mood for a confidential chat by glaring at her silently and ferociously for nearly a minute, Day suddenly said in a silky voice, “Understand you’re planning to leave town, Mrs. Knight.”

  Had he possessed a sleek black mustache to twirl, hissed his words and called her “my proud beauty” instead of “Mrs. Knight,” he could have given no more perfect a portrayal of a villain about to foreclose the mortgage. The woman stared at him in bewilderment.

  “Why, yes, after the funeral,” she said finally. “I plan to live with a sister in California. With Willard gone, there is nothing to hold me here.”

  The inspector nodded with sinister satisfaction. In the same cat-and-mouse tone, he said, “As I recall your statement, you had no idea at the time why your husband disappeared after the Lancaster murder.”

  She looked even more bewildered. “That’s right, Inspector. Of course now I realize it was because he knew he would be suspected of the murder. But I’m sure Willard was innocent.”

  “So am I,” Day said agreeably. Abruptly he shot at me, “Moon, tell Mrs. Knight what you just learned.”

  “Sure, Inspector. Mrs. Knight, when I first talked to you, and later when you gave a formal statement to the police, you made a great point of your ignorance of your husband’s affairs. As I recall, prior to my visit you had no idea what it was he saw in the newspaper that upset him so much.”

  Her husky voice seemed to me to grow an edge of caution. “I thought it probably was something on the market page.”

  “It never even occurred to you it might have been the Lancaster killing?”

  After a nearly imperceptible pause, she said, “Of course not.”

  “That’s odd,” I remarked. “You must have forgotten that only the evening before your husband told you all about his predicament, including his argument with Walter Lancaster.”

  Her face continued to look only puzzled, but I was watching her hands, and they suddenly clenched together so tightly, the knuckles turned white. “He didn’t mention Mr. Lancaster. He only — ” Abruptly she stopped, then proceeded in a more even tone, “I don’t know why you men think you have to trap me into something or other with trick questions. You couldn’t possibly know what my husband said to me in private.”

  “Your husband repeated it, Mrs. Knight. He told the whole story of your domestic squabble to a drinking companion while he was supposed to be at his ‘board meeting.’ We have the evidence of the drinking companion.”

  For a long time she made no comment. Her hands worked together as though she were kneading dough and her face assumed a pinched, angry expression.

  Finally she said in a furious voice, “That woman! You say drinking companion, but loving companion is more like it! He told that skinny redheaded thing!”

  “Oh, so you knew he was having an affair with Mrs. Jones?”

  “Mrs. Whore is more like it,” she said hysterically. “Snatching other women’s husbands when she’s got a perfectly good man of her own.” Then she seemed to realize she was reacting exactly as we wished, and sullenly drew her lips into a thin line.

  I asked, “If you knew your husband was seeing Mrs. Jones, how does it happen you never compared notes with Mr. Jones? You don’t impress me as a woman who would accept a situation like that without some action.”

  Her lips began to tremble, and suspecting she was going to cry, Warren Day glared at her so belligerently, she was startled into changing her mind. Just being in the same room with a woman was trial enough for the inspector. A weeping woman was more than he intended to bear.

  “I did try to talk to him about two
months ago,” she said in a shaky voice. “But she’s got him so fooled, he’s stark blind. He said women my age sometimes begin imagining things about their husbands, and he was sure when my period of adjustment was over, I’d realize Willard was a good husband. I guess Willard had told him I was beginning to have female trouble, and he thought my suspicions were just part of the sickness. His talking down to me like he was a doctor or something made me so furious, I never mentioned it to him again.”

  The inspector cleared his throat as a signal to me he was ready to take over. I leaned against the wall and waited.

  He had decided to drop the silkily villainous approach in favor of impersonal brusqueness. “We’ve strayed from the original point a little, Mrs. Knight. It’s useless for you to deny your husband told you all about the scrape he was in the evening Lancaster was killed, and you deliberately concealed that fact from the police.”

  Her head gave a frightened shake. “Not all, he didn’t tell me. Just that he’d borrowed a lot of money to invest in stock, and one of the other stockholders was going to let it out the next morning that the stock had a false value. He said he was ruined and might even go to jail, but he never told me who the man was who was causing all the trouble. He never mentioned Mr. Lancaster’s name.”

  Without belief Day asked, “Then why did you deny knowing anything about your husband’s affairs?”

  “Willard told me to. I lied about what happened the next morning too, but I had to. When he saw the headline about Mr. Lancaster’s murder, he told me he was the man who had intended to ruin him. He said he could dispose of the bad stock if he had twenty-four hours, and if the police came I should stall them off to give him time. What else could I do? I didn’t want Willard to be ruined and have to go to prison.”

  The inspector said dryly, “This is the second plausible story you’ve told, Mrs. Knight. First you know nothing about your husband’s stock-market jam, then when you get caught in the lie, you suddenly know half the details. Just enough to explain the lie, but not enough to make it possible that you killed Walter Lancaster.”