If Death Ever Slept

“You can start by excluding me,” Otis Jarrell said. “Thursday afternoon I had business appointments, three of them, and got home a little before six. Sunday-”

“Were the appointments all at the same place?”

“No. One downtown and two midtown. Sunday morning I was with the police commissioner at the Penguin Club for an hour, from ten-thirty to eleven-thirty, went straight home, was in my library until lunch time at one-thirty, returned to the library and was there until five o’clock. So you can exclude me.”

“Pfui.” Wolfe was disgusted. “You can’t be as fatuous as you sound, Mr. Jarrell. Your Thursday is hopeless, and your Sunday isn’t much better. Not only were you loose between the Penguin Club and your home, but what about the library? Were you alone there?”

“Most of the time, yes. But if I had gone out I would have been seen.”

“Nonsense. Is there a rear entrance to your premises?”

“There’s a service entrance.”

“Then it isn’t even worth discussing. A man with your talents and your money, resolved on murder, could certainly devise a way of getting down to the ground without exposure.” Wolfe’s head moved. “When I invited exclusion by alibis I didn’t mean to court inanities. Can any of you furnish invulnerable proof that you must be eliminated for either of those periods?”

“On Sunday,” Roger Foote said, “I went to Belmont to look at horses. I got there at nine o’clock and I didn’t leave until after five.”

“With company? Continuously?”

“No. I was always in sight of somebody, but a lot of different people.”

“Then you’re not better off than Mr. Jarrell. Does anyone else want to try, now that you know the requirements?”

Apparently nobody did. Wyman and Susan, who were holding hands, looked at each other but said nothing. Trella turned around to look at her brother and muttered something I didn’t catch. Lois just sat, and so did Jarrell.

Then Nora Kent spoke. “I want to say something, Mr. Wolfe.”

“Go ahead, Miss Kent. You can’t make it any worse.”

“I’d like to make it better-for me. If you’re making an exception of me you haven’t said so, and I think you should. I think you should tell them that I came to see you Friday afternoon and what I said.”

“You tell them. I’ll listen.”