Skinner told me to sit, and they had a chair waiting too. He asked Bowen, “You want to take it, Ed?”
“No, go ahead,” the DA told him.
Skinner eyed me. “I guess you know as much about where we stand as I do.”
I lifted my shoulders and let them down. “I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m flat on my back.”
He nodded. “We all are, not for quotation. Most of us gave up our weekends, but we might as well not have. During the last forty hours we’ve had more men on this case than any other in my time, and I can’t see that we’ve gained an inch, and the others agree with me. It is an extremely bad situation, it couldn’t be worse, and something has to be done. We’ve been discussing it here at length, and various proposals have been made and some adopted, and one of them concerns you. We want your help on it.”
“I’ve been trying to help.”
“I know you have. Ever since I read your report last Friday I have thought that our best single chance was the keys. Those keys were lifted from a lady’s bag while twelve people were present in the room. I don’t think it’s possible that no one saw any significant glance or movement. As you know, they have been questioned over and over, and the only result has been to focus suspicion on Hagh, the ex-husband, because he was nearer Mrs. Jaffee than anyone else for most of the evening. But all of them had opportunities, as you make clear in your report — and in fact they don’t deny it. We certainly can’t charge Hagh just because he had more chances than the rest of them; and, besides that, what was his motive, and where would that leave us on the first two murders? Do you argue with that?”
“No, I’ve got no arguments left.”
“And arguments don’t catch murderers anyway. I agree. We want to make an all-out effort to get a line on the lifting of the keys. More questions won’t do it. We want to take them to Nero Wolfe’s office and have them go through it, with Wolfe and you taking part, of course. Words and actions. We want them to repeat, as closely as they can, everything they said and did Thursday evening, with three or four of us present, and we want to take a tape recording of it.”
I lifted my brows at him.