“Neither Lanerd nor Roffis will dispute any of it.”
“Tildy will tell you it’s true. Roffis came in; he tried to put Mr. Lanerd out, even had the hall door open. He struck Mister Lanerd in the face; it made him furious. He seized a knife from the serving-table the waiter’d just put out in the hall, stabbed the guard in the back. We couldn’t believe he was dead for a little, then we dragged him to the closet, dumped him in there, and held a council to decide what to do.”
I really was impressed. What she’d said checked perfectly with Auguste’s story, so far.
“We decided Mr. Lanerd would have to get cleaned up; there was blood on his coat and shirt. Right after the stabbing, we thought the waiter would be able to see us dragging the body to the closet, so I ran over and pushed the bedroom door to. There was blood on my gloves, I still had them on, some of it got on the door. That’s what made us think of the stain on Mr. Lanerd’s coat. So he went across the hall to change.”
“Auguste said someone came out of the bedroom. But he didn’t recognize the man. He recognized Lanerd quickly enough a little later when I was in the room.”
“That old goof. He’s half blind. He couldn’t recognize his own mother unless he heard her talking. Mr. Lanerd bumped right into him, but didn’t say a word. Auguste grunted but never knew who it was. Tildy telephoned the other man, Hacklin, told him that Roffis had run some intruder out of the room and hadn’t come back, would he come over and take us to the studio. So he did. Of course I had to go down in the service elevator.”
“Ridiculous rule.” I quoted, “‘Only nurses with infants allowed in guest elevators.’ Yair. Go on.”
“That’s all. Except at the studio, Tildy kept reassuring herself that she’d had to do it, she couldn’t let him go to jail.”
I remembered what MacGregory had said. It checked.
“Why’d you skip out on Hacklin?”