“Sit down and I’ll tell you. I want to present some facts, offer my explanation of them, and get your opinion. There’s a chair there beside your nephew.”
To a man trying to grab the offensive and hold it, it’s a comedown to accept an invitation to be seated. But the alternative, to go on standing in a room full of sitters, is just as awkward, unless you intend to walk out soon, and Jean couldn’t know what he intended until he learned what he was up against. He took the chair next to Bernard.
“What facts?” he asked.
“I said,” Wolfe told him, “that this may take all night, but that doesn’t mean that I want it to. I’ll make it as short as possible.” He reached to his breast pocket and pulled out folded sheets of paper. “Instead of telling you what this says I’ll read it to you.” He glanced around. “I suppose you all know, or most of you, that tomorrow will be Miss Nieder’s twenty-first birthday.”
“Oh, yes!” Polly Zarella said emphatically.
Wolfe glared at her. He couldn’t stand emphatic women. “I persuaded Mr. Demarest,” he said, “to anticipate the delivery date of this paper by a few hours. It was intended, as you will see, only for Miss Nieder, but, as Mr. Cramer would tell you if you asked him, evidence in a case of murder has no respect for confidences.”
He unfolded the paper. “This,” he said, “is a holograph. It is written on two sheets of plain bond paper, and is dated at the top Yellowstone Park, May sixteenth, Nineteen forty-six. It starts, ‘My dearest Cynthia,’ and goes on:
“I’ll send this to Henry, sealed, and tell him not to open it and to give it to you on your twenty-first birthday. That will be June eleventh next year. How I would love to be with you that day! Well, perhaps I will. If I’m not, I think by that time you will know your way around enough to decide for yourself how to look at this. You ought to know about it, but I don’t want you to right now.”
Wolfe looked up. “This is not paragraphed. Evidently Mr. Nieder didn’t believe in paragraphs.” He returned to the paper:
“You are going to get the news that I have killed myself and a farewell note from me. I know that will affect you, because we are fond of each other in spite of all our differences, but it won’t break your heart. I’m not going to kill myself. I hope and expect to be with you again and with the work I love. I’m writing this to explain what I’m doing. I think you know that I loved Helen. You didn’t like her, and that’s one thing I have against you, because she gave me the only warm happiness I have ever known outside of my work. She understood what I — but I don’t want to make this too long. I only want you to know what happened. Jean found out about us and killed her. Just how he did it I don’t know, but out alone with her on the horses it would have been easy for a man like him, with his will power and cleverness. He intended to kill me too, and he still intends to, and as you know, Jean always does everything he intends to do. That’s why I wouldn’t leave the apartment those three days and nights, and that’s why I came away. I don’t suppose I am very brave, at least not physically brave, and of course you know that Jean has always overwhelmed me. I was in complete terror of him after he killed Helen, and I still am. He will not forget and he will never leave anything undone. I’m surprised that he hasn’t followed me out here, and perhaps he has, but he loves his part of that business nearly as much as I love mine, and the fall line is being assembled, and I think he’ll wait until I get back. I tore myself away only to save my life. Only I’m not coming back, not now. When he gets the news he’ll think I’m dead. I can’t stay away forever, I know that. I’ll see what happens. He might die himself. People do die. But I’m trying to study what I know of his character. I know him pretty well. I think it is possible that if he thinks of me as dead for a long time, perhaps two or three years or even only one year, and then I suddenly return to join him in that business again and do for it what no one else can do, his mind may work in such a way that he will not feel he has to carry out his intention of killing me. That’s one of the possibilities. Anyhow I’ll see what happens. I know I can’t stay away forever. It may be that somehow I’ll be back with you and my work before your twenty-first birthday comes, and if so I’ll get this from Henry and you will never see it. But I’ll send it to him because if I never do get back I want you to know the truth of this. I’m going to tell you in my farewell note that I am depending on you to keep that business at the top because you have a fine talent, a very fine talent that I’m proud of, and that will be the only part of my farewell note that will not be a fake. I mean every word of that. I am very fond of you and proud of you. Your Uncle Paul.”