“Much better, yes. I guess I was pretty empty.”
“Good.” Wolfe leaned back and sighed. “Now. You came to me as soon as the police let you go. Does that mean that you want my help in this new circumstance?”
“It certainly does. I want—”
“Excuse me. We’ll go faster if I lead, and Mr. Cramer is quite capable of sending men here with warrants. Let’s compress it. There are two points on which I must be satisfied before we can proceed. First, whether you killed that man. An attorney may properly work for a murderer, but I’m not an attorney, and anyway I don’t like money from murderers. Did you kill him?”
“No. I want to—”
“Just the no will do if it’s the truth. Is it?”
“Yes. It’s no.”
“I’m inclined to accept it, for reasons mostly not communicable. Some are. For instance, if you had been unable to eat that pâté—” Wolfe cut himself off and sent his eyes at me. “Archie. Did Miss Nieder kill that man?”
I looked at her, my lips puckered, and her gaze met mine. I must admit that she looked pretty ragged, not at all the same person as the one who had modeled, just twenty-four hours before, a dancing dress of Swiss eyelet organdy with ruffled shoulders. She had sure been through something, but not necessarily a murder.
I shook my head and told Wolfe, “No, sir. No guarantee with sanctions, but I vote no. My reasons are like yours, but I might mention that I strongly doubt if I would have had the impulse to make her stop crying by kissing her thoroughly if she had jabbed a window pole into a man’s face more than a dozen times. No.”