“Protecting the help, huh?” Cramer snorted incredulously. “Anyhow, you knew it, and you knew it sewed her up, and you knew if she was arrested and came to trial you would have to go to court and testify, and you don’t like to leave home and you don’t like what there is to sit on in a courtroom, so you arrange it otherwise, and I’ll be damned if anyone has appointed you judge, jury, district attorney, and the police force all in one.”
Wolfe’s shoulders moved an eighth of an inch up and down. “As I said, get a warrant, but watch the wording.”
Cramer glared. A noise like a giggle came from the direction of Helen Vardis, and Joe Groll, being perched on the arm of her chair and therefore close enough, put his hand over hers. Apparently the days when they had taken turns following each other were only a memory.
I put in an entry. “Excuse me, but when you gentlemen finish the shadow-boxing I would like to ask a question.” I was looking at Wolfe. “You say you knew Poor wasn’t Poor. When and how?”
Of course Wolfe faked. He sighed as if he were thinking now this is going to be an awful bore. Actually he was always tickled stiff to show how bright he was.
His eyes came to me. “Wednesday evening you told me that Mr. Poor smoked ten to fifteen cigars a day. Thursday Mr. Cramer said the same thing. But the man that came here Tuesday, calling himself Poor, didn’t even know how to hold a cigar, let alone smoke one.”
“He was nervous.”
“If he was he didn’t show it, except with the cigar. You saw him. It was a ludicrous performance and he should never have tried it. When I learned that Mr. Poor was a veteran cigar smoker, the only question was who had impersonated him in this office? And the complicity of Mrs. Poor was obvious, especially with the added information, also furnished by Mr. Cramer, that no photograph of Mr. Poor was available. There are photographs of everybody nowadays. Mrs. Poor was an ass. She was supremely an ass when she selected me to bamboozle. She wanted to establish the assumption that Mr. Blaney was going to kill Mr. Poor. That was intelligent. She did not want to take her counterfeit Mr. Poor to the police, for fear someone there might be acquainted with the real Mr. Poor. That also was intelligent. But it was idiotic to choose me as the victim.”
“She hated men,” I remarked.
Wolfe nodded. “She must have had a low opinion of men. In order to get what she wanted, which presumably was something like half a million dollars — counting her husband’s fortune, the insurance money, and a half share in the business after Mr. Blaney had been executed for the murder of Mr. Poor — she was willing to kill three men, two by direct action and one indirectly. Incidentally, except for the colossal blunder of picking on me she was not a fool.”