Might as Well Be Dead by Nero Wolfe Page B

innocence. His almost hysterical relief on learning of her alibi, then the doubt creeping in, then his changing expression as he read the paper again and grasped the possibilities—if that was all counterfeit I should be disbarred for incompetence.”
    “Certainly I’m not competent to judge,” Wolfe stated, “since I didn’t see him. But since I have my own reason for not thinking it as simple as it seems I won’t challenge yours. What else?”
    “Nothing positive. Only negatives. I had to promise him I wouldn’t cross-examine Mrs. Molloy, or quit the case, and I didn’t want to quit. I had to accept his refusal to take the witness stand. If he had been framed the key question was the identity of the man who had made the phone call that made him dash to the Molloy apartment, but he said he had spent hours trying to connect the voice with someone he knew, and couldn’t. The voice had been hoarse and guttural and presumably disguised, and he couldn’t even guess.
    “Two other negatives. He knew of no one who bore him enough ill will to frame him for murder, and he knew of no one who might have wanted Molloy out of the way. In fact he knows very little about Molloy—if he is to be believed, and I think he is. Of course the ideal suspect would be a man who coveted Mrs. Molloy and schemed to remove both her husband and Peter Hays at one stroke, but he is sure there is no such man. On those matters, and others, I have had no better luck with Mrs. Molloy.”
    “You have talked with her?”
    “Three times. Once briefly and twice at length. She wanted me to arrange for her to see Peter, but he refused to permit it. She wouldn’t tell me much about her relations with Peter, and there was no point in pressing her; I knew all I needed to know about that. I spent most of my time with her asking about her husband’s activities and associates—everything about him. It had become apparent that I couldn’t possibly get my client acquitted unless I found a likely candidate to replace him. She told me all she could, in fact she told me a lot, but there was a drag on her, and it wasn’t hard to guess what the drag was. She thought Peter had killed her husband. The poor woman was pathetic; she kept asking me questions about the gun. It was obvious how her mind was working. She was willing to accept it that Peter had acted in a fit of passion, but if it had happened that way, how account for his having the gun with him? I asked her if there was any chance that the gun had been her husband’s, there in the apartment, and she was sure there wasn’t. When I told her that Peter had denied his guilt, and that I believed him, and why, she just stared at me. I asked her if she had in fact been continuously with her companions at the theater that evening, and she said yes, but her mind wasn’t on that, it was on Peter. I honestly think she was trying to decide whether I really believed him or was only pretending to. As for what she told me about her husband, I didn’t have the funds for a proper investigation—”
    He stopped because Fritz had entered and was standing there. Fritz spoke. “Luncheon is ready, sir.”
    Wolfe got up. “If you’ll join us, Mr. Freyer? There’ll be enough to go around. Chicken livers and mushrooms in white wine. Rice cakes. Another place, Fritz.”

Chapter 6
    A T FOUR O’CLOCK that afternoon I left the house, bound for 171 East 52nd Street, to keep an appointment, made for me by Freyer, with Mrs. Michael M. Molloy.
    After lunch we had returned to the office and taken up where we had left off. Freyer had phoned his office to send us the complete file on the case, and it had arrived and been pawed over. I had summoned Saul Panzer, Fred Durkin, Orrie Cather, and Johnny Keems to report to the office at six o’clock. They were our four main standbys, and they would call for a daily outlay of $160, not counting expenses. If it lasted a month, 30 times 160 equals 4800, so Wolfe’s self-esteem might