by Marvin Kaye
“Then the pictures—she didn’t help him take—”
“If I were you,” I interrupted, “I’d forget it, destroy them, and never say a word to her.”
He nodded his head, hand soothing his temples. “Damn,” he said, half to himself, “I know I shouldn’t think it—the poor son-of-a-bitch is dead, after all—but if he wasn’t, and I suspected that’s what he’d done!” His fists clenched convulsively.
“Yes,” I replied, “after the promotion came through, I imagine he rather regretted approaching you. And he was probably aware that someone had gotten into his desk that Sunday.”
“Why do you think that?”
“Well, your daughter said Lasker stopped asking her out after the promotion came through. Then, all of a sudden, he started getting interested in her again. He kept calling her until she swallowed her pride and went out with him again, just last night, as a matter of fact.”
“So?” Saxon asked.
“So—he was apparently anxious enough about your attitude to pump her about it—how you were behaving toward her those days.”
Nodding in understanding, Saxon squeezed my hand, again thanked me, then joined Harrison, who was just buttoning up his coat. The two, deciding to stop at the Fifth Avenue Club for a beer, hailed everyone from the door and departed.
Ruth Goetz wanted Frost to take her home, but he begged off, claiming he had some things to discuss with Hilary. She wasn’t wild about the idea of leaving my boss behind to lock up (Hilary had made me replace Goetz’s key on the corpse earlier, first wiping it off carefully), but Frost finally persuaded Mrs. Goetz to give him her key to the showroom.
She still wanted a ride home, though, and Scott came to her rescue—which I’m sure he instantly regretted, for the woman immediately snatched his arm as if she’d just foreclosed a mortgage on it.
Flinging a pink feather boa that matched her dress around her seashell-necklace-circled throat, Ruth Goetz said good night and dragged her quarry away. I uttered a brief prayer to whatever gods may be for Scott’s marriage.
Now there were only four of us: Frost, Jensen, Hilary, and me. As I approached the table where Jensen sat, I noted Hilary and the lawyer in a corner engaged in earnest debate. Coming up behind her, I found, to my surprise, that I was the subject of discussion.
“It’s a matter of discretion,” the attorney was saying, but Hilary wouldn’t permit him to finish.
“He stays,” she said, “and there are no two ways about it—”
Seeing me, Frost tried to shush her, but swinging round, Hilary told me to come closer. I complied, and got a shock, for the lady took my arm familiarly and patted it.
“I made two mistakes about him today, but I’m not about to make a third. Set your mind at ease—he’s completely trustworthy.”
Stunned at her unusual demonstrativeness, I stammered thanks for her vote of confidence, even though I hadn’t a notion of what it was for.
“Well, all right,” the attorney grumbled, “if you insist ...”
All this while, Jensen, still seated at the same place he’d been all evening, was plunged into his own autumnal musings. With bearded chin in cupped hand, the youthful toyman resembled more than ever a wistful old/young college instructor.
“Thou hast nor youth nor age,” I thought, “but, as it were, an after-dinner’s sleep, dreaming on both ...”
The three of us joined Jensen at his table, and he roused himself sufficiently to congratulate Hilary on the work she’d done that night.
“Thank you,” she replied, “but it’s not over yet.”
“I didn’t think so,” he sighed, reaching into his pocket and extracting a billfold. He withdrew a five-dollar bill and held it across the table for Frost. “I’m afraid that I don’t have anything smaller.”
The lawyer chuckled. “I’m not violently opposed, you know, to accepting larger retainers.” He took the proffered bill.
“Now that we’ve settled that,” Hilary said, “and now that you are represented by counsel, Mr. Jensen, would you like to hear why I believe you killed Sid Goetz?”
“Yes,” he answered quietly. “It would be rather interesting.”
26
I STUDIED JENSEN’S FACE. No trace of cunning marred its clarity, nor was there any hint of menace in his soft voice as he replied to Hilary.
“I advise you,” said Frost, “to avoid any comment on Hilary’s accusation. Let her do the talking.”
The other said nothing, but inclined his head to her in grave, almost courtly fashion.
Hilary spoke. “The real trouble has been all the subsidiary problems—the spy, Lasker’s fall—that put up a smokescreen around the basic question of Sid’s death. I was aware of your guilt early on, Mr. Jensen, and had set my associate to firming up the case by checking the other suspects to eliminate them. But then, having met you, I wasn’t sure I wanted to make my knowledge known—though I had second thoughts when Lasker turned up dead. I was afraid at first you’d also killed him. But there was no real reason why you would. You had no motive for wishing Lasker dead.”
“Nor Sid,” Jensen murmured. Frost hushed him.
“At any rate, it didn’t seem possible to assume two spies and two murderers. But fortunately for you, I ran into Wallis shortly after leaving the stairwell where Lasker’s body had lain. And everything fell into place. The only things I lacked were corroborative details, which my assistant traced down for me.”
I made a mental note to ask Hilary whether “assistant” was a comedown from “associate.”
“Now,” she went on, “let’s examine the evidence in the Goetz shooting. I saw three basic sets of clues to establish your guilt. The first class concerned motive, means, and opportunity, the second, your manner of behavior today, the third—I’ll get to that in a few minutes.”
Picking up a new chart, Hilary made a series of five pencil checks opposite the names thereon. “All right,” she said, “motive, means, and opportunity—let’s eliminate people. First, forget about the Trim-Tram staff. Neither Saxon nor Harrison have motives. And they both have alibis, because they attended a sales meeting and went straight home afterwards. So, leaving them out, I could only think of five people who might conceivably want Sid Goetz dead: you, his wife, possibly Mr. Frost, Tom Lasker, and his partner, Dean Wallis.”
“I don’t know about me and Ruth,” the lawyer remarked, “but Lasker is certainly out of the picture.”
“Not necessarily—at least not when I was first thinking things through. He could have shot Goetz, then fought with Wallis.”
“One thing disturbs me,” said Jensen. “The police now suspect Wallis.”
“Not for long,” Hilary replied. “He may have had a motive, and we don’t know for sure whether he knew where Goetz kept his gun ... but Wallis has an ironclad alibi for last night, with a priest as witness!”
“So it’s only going to be a matter of time before the police start thinking about other suspects,” Frost stated.
“Correct. Of course, they may well hit on Lasker as the most likely choice. He had a motive—fear of disclosure. Yet I doubt whether he knew of Goetz’s gun. Why would he? And he was out all last night with Penny Saxon. So, whether the officials write him off or not, I certainly did. Which left only Ruth Goetz and you two.”
“I suppose,” the lawyer said, “that neither Ruth’s alibi nor mine hold much water.”
“Why? Where did you go after seeing Goetz?”
Frost gestured with his hands, but said nothing.
“Oh,” said Hilary, shaking her head. “Well chacun à son goût. Now that kind of alibi works two ways. Either they believe you both, or neither of you are credited. Well, let’s not eliminate either of you—for the time being—on opportunity. Or on means. You didn’t know Sid had a gun here, but Mrs. Goetz did. And she could have told you. So, again, you cancel one another out.”
“From what you’re saying,” Frost laughed, “we’re still suspects.”
“Wr
ong. You flunk on the motivation test. Not only didn’t either of you want Sid dead, you both had considerable reason for wishing him to stay alive.”
“Oh?” Frost remarked, suddenly guarded.
“All that you personally stood to gain from Goetz was a live client. He was worth nothing to you dead. As for coveting his wife, that’s nonsense. Goetz evidently didn’t much care about her fidelity, so why get him out of the way when you had all the conveniences and none of the responsibilities?”
The attorney inclined his head slightly and stated, with a smirk, that he neither confirmed nor denied Hilary’s theories.
“As for Ruth Goetz herself,” she continued, “she stood to lose a great deal if her husband died. Alive, he might eventually be persuaded to cut her in for a bigger chunk of the estate.”
“Ingeniously reasoned,” said Frost. “You’re assuming, though, that she was aware of the terms of her husband’s will.”
“Come on, counselor,” Hilary replied, adopting her favorite superior tone, “it’s obvious the two of you must have been working on a way to dig out further cash from Goetz. Divorce proceedings would mean alimony, and a fat fee for you, not to mention what you’d collect under the table.”
Frost began to protest, but Hilary went right on talking. “On top of everything else, there was the question of the Trim-Tram spy, Goetz’s silent partner ... my guess would be that you and Ruth Goetz were trying like mad to crack his identity.”
“Why would that matter to us?” Frost asked woodenly.
“Oh, stop playing ‘lawyer.’ It matters very little to me whether you and that woman were trying to wrest control of the business from Sid. The bastard deserved it. If Ruth Goetz could work her questionable charms on the silent partner and gain control of his stock ...”
“All right, all right,” the lawyer laughed. “But what does this all prove, Hilary?”
“That Sid Goetz was better off alive than dead, so far as you and his wife were concerned. Absence of motive.”
She turned to Jensen. “Which, by process of elimination, only left you for me to consider as a suspect.” She touched three fingers, one at a time, as she spoke. “Motive. Means. Opportunity. You were the only one to qualify in all three categories. You told my secretary that Goetz threatened to shoot if you followed him into his showroom to get your missing dowel. Assumption—you knew he had a pistol, so you check out on means. Next, you told me that you spent last night in your showroom till about ten P.M., after which you went home alone. No witnesses ... so you can’t be eliminated on the basis of opportunity, either.”
“And the motive,” Jensen said, “is all too obvious”—which gave Frost a stomachache. He repeated his warning for the other to refrain from comment. I figured Frost still didn’t trust my discretion.
“At first,” Hilary answered, “I couldn’t give much credence to the revenge motive. True, Sid screwed you out of his company by using his wife to grab your shares. And he stole your game, Swing Up. But that was a while before, and you’d rallied enough to go into business for yourself. On the basis of my secretary’s impressions of you—as well as my own—I could not believe you would harbor a grudge strong enough to plot murder long after the fact.”
“Then what did you think?” Jensen asked.
“I believed that whatever prompted you to kill Goetz was a recent injury which, on top of the old wounds, aggravated you beyond endurance. I later learned that such a new injury existed—the theft of the programmed dowel from your toy auto.”
Jensen pursed his lips. “I thought I’d minimized that when your man asked me about it.”
“It didn’t take much imagination to estimate its real importance. It was in a prominent place in the showroom, with a special advertising display, and even while you were pretending to my assistant that the theft wasn’t important, a customer walked out on you when you couldn’t demonstrate the toy. A lost customer at Toy Fair? I’ve been at Trim-Tram long enough, and believe me, I know! A lost sale is a major tragedy!”
“Yes,” said Jensen, “everything you say is correct.” He turned to Frost, who was throwing a conniption. “I appreciate your concern, Willie, but I intend to tell the lady everything that happened.”
“Be it on your head,” Frost sighed, slumping back, hands dug deep in his pockets.
“One thing, though, Hilary,” Jensen remarked. “You said it had to be a recent incident that caused me to kill Sid—but you made it sound as if you were already convinced of my guilt.”
“I was.”
“Why?”
“We’ll get to that soon. But we haven’t discussed the class of clues yet that deal with your behavior this morning and afternoon.”
“I didn’t do anything unusual.”
“Exactly!”
“Huh?” Frost grunted.
“Counselor,” she explained, “when my assistant questioned you and Mrs. Goetz, he had two problems to surmount—first, that he is not a licensed detective, and second, that we did not want to reveal just then that there had been a crime committed. He hedged very neatly with you, while, with Mrs. Goetz, he somewhat riskily took her into his confidence.”
Addressing Jensen once more, Hilary continued. “But you didn’t show any surprise when this man asked you some very odd questions. That might have been excusable at first, considering the early morning drinking you’d been doing. But this afternoon, when he saw you a second time, you were equally liberal with your cooperation. The reason you didn’t pry into his motive for interrogating you was that you already knew ... even if you didn’t find out whether he was with the police, it was apparent to you that Goetz’s body had been discovered. So you answered his questions with suspicious amenity, already casting yourself in the role of a murder suspect.”
“Yes, I see what you mean,” Jensen said.
“There were contributory actions as well. Not opening the showroom for business. Getting looped in the bar. Wallowing in self-deprecation and despair. I could buy the missing dowel episode getting you angry enough to fight with Sid, maybe even scheme to steal it back from his showroom. But its loss wouldn’t throw you into suicidal depression, would it? More likely, the more you’d think about it, the madder you’d become—”
“On the other hand,” I put in, “the consciousness of having killed a man could very well affect a man the way I saw you. Particularly a person who’s been described to me as excruciatingly honest.”
“Yes,” Jensen admitted, looking at me for the first time without his customary reserve. It was the only chance I got for a direct glimpse of the agony he was rigidly repressing—and I was sorry for the opportunity.
Hilary must have seen it, too, for even she was temporarily quelled. We were all silent for a moment: the only movement was Jensen’s.
He shuddered involuntarily.
“One other suspicious thing,” Hilary resumed at last. “When my assistant told you the door to Goetz Sales was locked, you were surprised enough to ask him whether he was sure he was correct. I imagine you left the door open after you left last night, so when you heard it was locked, you knew somebody must have found the body. But who? And was it really true ...?”
I remembered the way the handle of the door had stealthily turned.
“Yes,” said Jensen, “I suppose you both heard me trying to open the door this morning.”
“It was a foolish thing to do,” Hilary told him, “especially with your showroom right down the hall. It was too soon after my assistant had questioned you. Therefore, you were the first person I thought of when the knob turned.”
27
FOR THE FIRST TIME in about three hours, Jensen rose from his chair. Gripping its back hard enough to blanch his knuckles, he began to speak.
“I doubt,” he began, “that I can explain convincingly what I’ve felt about this business. I never intended to kill Sid. Please accept that as true. Whether what happened was an accident, I don’t know. But the main thing—what I’m trying to say—is I’ve
always thought myself above violence. I detest it. So, in my case, the knowledge of possible guilt is more oppressive than the process of punishment.”
Clasping his hands behind his back, he veered from personal exegesis, adopting the tone of a college lecturer. “The dowel story, as I say, was considerably minimized when I first told it. Actually, I was furious to find Sid in my showroom. This bastard who’d cheated and used me—it was the first time I’d stood face-to-face with him since he fired me! Of course, we saw each other in the halls, but I always looked away, as though I were the guilty party!”
As his voice became more agitated, Jensen began to pace the room in quick, deliberate steps. “The first thing,” he said, “that I noticed on reentering my showroom was the empty space in my racer display. Sid turned and left without a word, but I ran after him, grabbed him by the arm. I said earlier that Sid threatened me, but actually I did most of the intimidating. I warned him I’d get that dowel back if I had to rip his showroom apart. That’s when he swore he’d get out his gun if I set foot inside. I saw customers in here, so I left. But I said I’d be back.”
“What time was that?” asked Hilary.
“Sometime after eight. I didn’t want him to sneak the dowel out of the building, so I closed up my office and waited across the hall from this showroom. I didn’t want to let Sid see me by accident, so I hid behind the fire door and cracked it a bit so I could see.”
“Why would Sid steal the damned dowel in the first place?” Frost interrupted. “What good would it do him?”
Jensen shrugged. “Who knows? He couldn’t copy the toy from it alone. Besides, it’s not a unique item, there are other racers like it on the market. The only thing unusual about mine is the styling, and the multiple programs on one component, instead of the necessity of feeding separate ‘runs’ into the racer through punch cards. Personally, I believe Sid stole it out of gratuitous malevolence. He hated it when I, of all people, moved in next door—”