Might as Well Be Dead

“Rita and Jerry were. We waited a few minutes for Tom, and then Rita and I went on in and Jerry waited in the lobby for Tom. Rita told him to leave the ticket at the box office, but he said no, he had told him they’d meet him in the lobby. Rita and I went on in because we didn’t want to miss the curtain. It was Julie Harris in The Lark.”

“How soon did the men join you?”

“It was quite a while. Almost the end of the first act.”

“When does the first act end?”

“I don’t know. It’s rather long.”

Wolfe’s head moved. “You’ve seen that play, Archie?”

“Yes, sir. I would say a quarter to ten, maybe twenty to.”

“Have you seen it, Saul?”

“Yes, sir. Twenty to ten.”

“You know that?”

“Yes, sir. Just my habit of noticing things.”

“Don’t disparage it. The more you put in a brain, the more it will hold-if you have one. How long would it take to get from One-seventy-one East Fifty-second Street to that theater?”

“After nine o’clock?”

“Yes.”

“With luck, if you were in a hurry, eight minutes. That would be a minimum. From that up to fifteen.”

Wolfe turned. “Mrs. Molloy, I wonder that you haven’t considered the possible significance of this. The anonymous call to the police, saying that a shot had been heard, was at nine-eighteen. The police arrived at nine-twenty-three. Even if he waited to see them arrive, and he probably didn’t, he could have reached the theater before the first act ended. Didn’t that occur to you?”

She was squinting at him. “If I understand you-you mean didn’t it occur to me that Jerry or Tom might have killed Mike?”

“Obviously. Didn’t it?”

“No!” She made it a little louder than it had to be, and I hoped Wolfe understood that she was raising her voice not at him, but at herself. It hadn’t occurred to her because the minute she had learned, on getting home that January night, that her husband had been found with a bullet in his head, and that P.H., with a gun in his pocket, had tried to force his way out, she thought she knew what had happened, and it had settled in her like a lump of lead. But she wasn’t going to tell Wolfe that. She told him instead, “There was no reason for Jerry to kill him. Or Tom. Why? And they had been in the bar across the street. Tom came not long after Rita and I went in, and said he needed a drink, and they went and had one.”

“Which one of them told you that?”

“Both of them. They told Rita and me, and we said they must have had more than one.”