He poured two drinks, pushed one across the desk towards me, tossed the other down his throat and immediately refilled his glass. He put the bottle midway between us.
“Help yourself,” he said.
I drank a little of the Scotch. It was very good: quite the best liquor I had had in months. I thought it was wonderful how a big-shot lawyer could unbend when he sees trouble coming towards him with his name on it.
“According to Maureen, Crosby’s death preyed on Janet’s mind,” I told him. “Maybe it did, but she certainly had an odd way of showing it. I should have thought she wouldn’t have felt like playing tennis or running around at a time like that, but apparently she did. Anyway, also according to Maureen, Janet committed suicide about six or seven weeks after the shooting. She took arsenic.”
A tiny drop of Scotch wobbled out of Willet’s glass on to his blotter. He said, “Good God!” under his breath.
“That was hushed up, too. As it happened Mrs. Salzer was away at the time, so Maureen and Dr. Salzer called in Dr. Bewley, a harmless old goat, and told him Janet was suffering from malignant endocarditis, and he obligingly issued the death certificate. Janet had a personal maid, Eudora Drew, who possibly overheard Salzer and Maureen cooking up this yarn. She put on the bite, and they paid her. I got a line on her and went to see her. She was smart enough to fob me off and get on to Salzer, telling him I was offering five hundred bucks for information, and if he liked to raise the ante she would keep her mouth shut. Mrs. Salzer had an answer to that. She sent along an ex-gunman who was working at the sanatorium to reason with her. According to Mrs. S. he got rough and killed her.”
Willet drew in a long, slow breath. He took a drink like a man who needs a drink.
“The family butler, John Stevens, also knew something, or suspected something,” I went on. “I was persuading him to loosen up when he was kidnapped by six Wops who work for Sherrill. They got a little tough with him, and he died, but that still makes murder. Two murders. Now we get to the third. Are you liking this?”
He said in a gritty voice, “Go on.”
“You will remember Nurse Gurney? Mrs. Salzer admits kidnapping her, only, according to her, Nurse Gurney fell down the fire escape and broke her neck. Mrs. Salzer hid her somewhere in the desert. That’s murder, too.”