Might as Well Be Dead

“The hell he was. I thought a murder investigation was finished when the murderer was tried and convicted.”

Wolfe nodded. “It is. But not when an innocent man is tried and convicted.”

It looked very much as if they were headed for insults. But before Cramer had one ready Wolfe went on. “You would ask, of course, if I have evidence to establish Peter Hays’s innocence. No, I haven’t. My reasons for thinking him innocent would not be admissible as evidence, and would have no weight for you. I intend to find the evidence if it exists, and Johnny Keems was looking for it last night.”

Cramer’s sharp gray eyes, surrounded by crinkles, were leveled at Wolfe’s brown ones. He was not amused. On previous occasions, during a murder investigation, he had found Wolfe a thorn in his hide and a pain in his neck, but this was the first time it had ever happened after it had been wrapped up by a jury.

“I am familiar,” he said, “with the evidence that convicted Hays. I collected it, or my men did.”

“Pfui. It didn’t have to be collected. It was there.”

“Well, we picked it up. What aspect was Keems working on?”

“The invitation to Mrs. Molloy to go to the theater. On the chance that it was designed, to get her away from the apartment. His instructions were to see Mr. and Mrs. Arkoff and Mr. and Mrs. Irwin, and to report to me if he got any hint of suspicion. He didn’t report, which was typical of him, and he paid for his disdain. However, I know that he saw those four, all of them. They were here this afternoon for more than an hour. He saw Mrs. Arkoff at her apartment shortly after eight o’clock, and returned two hours later and saw her and her husband. In between those two visits he saw Mr. and Mrs. Irwin at their apartment. Do you want to know what they say they told him?”

Cramer said he did, and Wolfe obliged. He gave him a full and fair report, including all essentials, unless you count as an essential his telling them he wanted to talk with them before he told the police what Johnny Keems had been doing-and anyway Cramer could guess that for himself.

At the end he added a comment. “The inference is patent. Either one or more of them were lying, or Johnny saw someone besides them, or his death had no connection with his evening’s work. I will accept the last only when I must, and apparently you will too or you wouldn’t be here. Did the circumstances eliminate fortuity?”