Might as Well Be Dead

“Oh, sure. He said he wanted to, and I thought since he was going to be my husband it was only natural. Did you tell him everything-what did you tell him?”

It didn’t look like paradise to me, him wanting to know what she had told me, and her wanting to know what I had told him, and they weren’t even married yet. “Nothing much,” I assured her. “Really nothing. After the promise I gave him it wasn’t necessary. Oh, by the way, now that I have you on the phone, I missed one bit entirely last night. At the end of the article, a sort of a climax, you ought to tell where you were and what you were doing the evening of January third. At the very minute Molloy was murdered, just after nine o’clock, if you remember. Do you?”

“Certainly I do. I was with Bill. We were dining and dancing at the Dixie Bower. We didn’t leave until after midnight.”

“That’s wonderful. That will fit right in with an idea I had and told Bill about, how all the time you were trying to be nice to Molloy because you were sorry for him you were deeply in love with a young man who-”

She cut me off. “Oh, the bell’s ringing! It must be Bill.”

A little click and she was gone. It didn’t matter much, since there was soon an interruption at my end. I had just hung up when the sound came of Wolfe’s elevator descending, and he had just entered and was crossing to his desk when the doorbell rang and I had to go to the hall to receive the company. I have already told about that, about Rita Arkoff ordering her mate to hang up his hat, and about Tom Irwin moving his chair next to his wife’s and holding her hand. But, looking back, I see that I haven’t mentioned Selma Molloy. I could go back and insert her, but I don’t care to cover up. I am not responsible for my subconscious, and if it arranged, without my knowing it, to leave Selma out because it didn’t want you to know how it felt about her, that’s its lookout. I now put her back in. Around five o’clock she had returned from her errand at Parker’s office, and, at Wolfe’s suggestion, had gone up to the plant rooms to look at the orchids. He had brought her down with him, and she was sitting in the red leather chair, after greeting her friends. Try again, subconscious.

Chapter 11