“You mean out for money?”
“No, not money. I don’t think so. Hell, you know the kind. She liked to see males react, she got a kick out of it. She liked to see females react too. Even Neil Imbrie, old enough to be her father, you should have seen her giving him the idea when his wife was there. Not that she was raw; she could put it in a flash and then cover. And what she could do with her voice! Sometimes I myself had to walk off. Anyhow I’ve got a girl at Bedford Hills.”
“Wasn’t Mr. Krasicki aware of all this?”
“Andy?” Gus leaned forward. “Listen. That was one of those things. From the first day he glimpsed her and heard her speak, he got drowned. He didn’t even float, he just laid there on the bottom. And him no fool, anything but, but it hit him so quick and hard he never got a chance to analyze. Once I undertook to try a couple of words, very careful, and the look he gave me! It was pathetic.” Gus shook his head. “I don’t know. If I had known he had talked her into marrying him I might have fumigated her myself, just as a favor to him.”
“Yes,” Wolfe agreed, “that would have been an adequate motive. So much for you. You mentioned Mr. Imbrie. What about him? Assume that Miss Lauer also gave him the idea when his wife was not there, that he reacted like a male, as you put it, that developments convinced him that he was in heaven, that she told him last evening of her intention to go away and marry Mr. Krasicki, and that he decided she must die. Are those assumptions permissible?”
“I wouldn’t know. They’re not mine, they’re yours.”
“Come come,” Wolfe snapped. “I’m not Mr. Noonan, thank God. Prudence will get us nowhere. Has Mr. Imbrie got that in him?”
“He might, sure, if she hooked him deep enough.”
“Have you any facts that contradict the assumptions?”
“No.”