Wolfe nodded. “Then that’s settled. She didn’t, unless we get cornered by facts, and in that case we’ll deserve it. The other point, Miss Nieder, is this: Was the man you saw up there a week ago today your uncle, and was it he who was killed last night?”
A “yes” popped out of her. She added, “It was Uncle Paul. I saw him. I went—”
“Don’t dash ahead. We’ll get to that. Since I’m assuming your good faith, tentatively at least, I am not suggesting that what you told me yesterday was flummery. I grant that you thought it was your uncle you saw a week ago today, and I accepted it then, but now it’s too flimsy for me. You’ll have to give me something better if you’ve got it. What was it that convinced you it was your uncle?”
“I knew it was,” Cynthia declared. “Maybe if I tried I could tell you how I knew, but I don’t have to because now I do know so I could prove it. I’ve been trying to tell you. You remember what I said about my uncle’s private file — that I thought Jean Daumery had taken it and that Bernard has it now. I went there last night to look for it, and saw that — that dead man there on the floor. You can imagine—”
She stopped and made a gesture.
“Yes, I can imagine,” Wolfe agreed. “Go ahead.”
“I made myself go close to look at him — his face was dreadful but he had the beard and the slick hair. I wanted to do something but I didn’t have nerve enough, and I had to sit down to pull myself together. Now they say I was in there fifteen minutes, but I wouldn’t think it took me that long to get up my nerve, but maybe it did, and then I went and pulled up the right leg of his trousers and pulled his sock down. He had two little scars about four inches above the ankle, and I knew those scars — that’s where my uncle got bit by a dog once. I looked at them close. I had to sit down again—” She stopped, with her mouth open. “Oh! That’s why it was fifteen minutes! I had forgotten all about that, sitting down again—”
“Then you left? What did you do?”
“I went home to my apartment and phoned Mr. Demarest. I hadn’t—”
“Who’s Mr. Demarest?”