Might as Well Be Dead

“It seems to me,” Arkoff put in, “that you’re fishing in dead water. Asking Mrs. Molloy didn’t have to be designed at all. If Peter Hays didn’t kill Molloy, if someone else did, of course it was somebody who knew him. He could have phoned Molloy and said he wanted to see him alone, and Molloy told him to come to the apartment, they would be alone there because Mrs. Molloy had gone to the theater. Why couldn’t it have happened like that?”

“It could,” Wolfe agreed. “Quite possible. The invitation to Mrs. Molloy was merely one of the aspects that deserved inquiry, and it might have been quickly eliminated. But not now. Now there is a question that must be answered: who killed Johnny Keems, and why?”

“Some damned fool. Some hit-and-run maniac.”

“Possibly, but I don’t believe it. I must be satisfied now, and so must the police, and even if you people are innocent of any complicity you can’t escape harassment. I’ll want to know more than I do now about the evening of January third, about what happened at the theater. I understand-Yes, Archie?”

“Before you leave last night,” I said, “I have a question to ask them.”

“Go ahead.”

I leaned forward to have all their faces as they turned to me. “About Johnny Keems,” I said. “Did he ask any of you anything about Bill Lesser?”

They had never heard the name before. You can’t always go by the reaction to a sudden unexpected question, since some people are extremely good at handling their faces, but if that name meant anything to one or more of them they were better than good. They all looked blank and wanted to know who Bill Lesser was. Of course Wolfe would also have liked to know who he was but didn’t say so. I told him that was all, and he resumed.

“I understand that Mrs. Molloy and Mrs. Arkoff went in to their seats before curtain time, and that Mr. Arkoff and Mr. Irwin joined them about an hour later, saying they had been in a bar across the street. Is that correct, Mr. Arkoff?”

Arkoff didn’t care for that at all, and neither did Irwin. Their position was that their movements on the evening of January 3 had no significance unless it was assumed that one or both of them might have killed Molloy and framed Peter Hays, and that was absurd. Wolfe’s position was that the police would ask him if he had questioned them about January 3, and if he said he had and they had balked, the police would want to know why.