If Death Ever Slept

Wolfe leaned back, clasped his fingers at the highest point of his central mound, took in a bushel of air and let it out, and grumbled, “I may have gone about this wrong. Of course one of you has lied.”

“You’re damn right,” Jarrell said, “and I know which one.”

“If Susan lied,” Roger objected, “so did Wyman. What about this Green?”

I would walk on his toes too, some day when I could get around to it.

“It was a mistake,” Wolfe declared, “to get you all on record regarding your whereabouts at that hour. Now you are all committed, including the one who took the gun, and he will be more reluctant than ever to speak. It would be pointless to hammer at you now; indeed, I doubt if hammering would have helped in any case. The time for hammering was Wednesday afternoon, the moment Mr. Jarrell found that the gun was gone. Then there had been no murder, with its menace of an inexorable inquisition.”

He looked them over. “So here we are. You know how it stands. I said that I shall have to inform the police if the possibility that Mr. Jarrell’s gun was used to kill Mr. Eber becomes a probability. It is nearer a probability, in my mind, now than it was an hour ago-now that all of you have denied taking the gun, for one of you did take it.”

His eyes went over them again. “When I speak to a man, or a woman, I like to look at him, but I speak now to the one who took the gun, and I can’t look at him because I don’t know who he is. So, speaking to him, I close my eyes.” He closed them. “If you know where the gun is, and it is innocent, all you have to do is let it reappear. You need not expose yourself. Merely put it somewhere in sight, where it will soon be seen. If it does not appear soon I shall be compelled to make one of two assumptions.”

He raised a finger, his eyes still closed. “One. That it is no longer in your possession and is not accessible. If it left your possession before Eber was killed it may have been used to kill him, and the police will have to be informed. If it left your possession after he was killed and you know it wasn’t used to kill him-and, as I said, that can be demonstrated-you will then have to expose yourself, but that will be a trifle since it will establish the innocence of the gun. I don’t suppose Mr. Jarrell will prosecute for theft.”