It was exactly the same for that evening, Wednesday, as it was for Monday. No fancy getup was required. They simply stated that they had all been in the house together for nearly an hour when the bell had rung and the butler had answered it, and Mrs. Whitten had staggered in with blood all over her. Again there was no place to start a wedge. Jerome, in his quiet subdued manner, offered to help by going to bring the butler, but Wolfe declined without thanks.
Wolfe glanced at the clock on the wall; it was a quarter to three. He tightened his lips and moved his eyes along the arc.
“Well. I am merely flattening my nose, to no purpose. We can’t go on all night, ladies and gentlemen. You’d better go home and go to bed.” He looked at Mrs. Whitten. “Except you, madam. You will of course sleep here. We have a spare room with a comfortable—”
There were protests in five voices, of various tones and tenors. Mortimer was of course the loudest, with Eve a close second. Wolfe shut his eyes while the storm blew, and then opened them.
“What do you think?” he demanded peevishly. “Am I a dunce? In a murder case it sometimes happens that a detective, stopped at a dead end, simply withdraws to wait upon a further event that may start a new path. That may be allowable, but not when the expected event is another murder. Not for me. A desire or intention to harm Mrs. Whitten may be in none of your minds, but I’m not going to risk it. She would be dead now if that blade had gone five inches in instead of across. I am willing, for the time being, to pursue this inquiry myself without recourse to the police or the District Attorney, but only with that condition: Mrs. Whitten stays under my roof until I am satisfied on certain points. She can leave at any moment if she regards the police as less obnoxious than me.”
“If you ask me, they are,” Eve snapped.
“This is blackmail and actionable,” Bahr declared.
“Okay, she goes home and you call the goddam cops,” was Mort’s contribution.
“If she stays,” Phoebe said firmly, “I stay.”
Mrs. Whitten found use for a long deep sigh for about the thousandth time. Twice during the session I had been sure she was going to faint. But there was plenty of life in her eyes as she met Wolfe’s gaze. “You said you would speak to me privately about Miss Alving.”