“Yes.” Cramer’s eyes were narrowed at him.
“If he had got his notion about the keys more promptly, he would have got to Miss Eads’s apartment before her return and would have found the murderer ambushed there. Surely the murderer was capable of calculating such a risk, and he would not have killed Mrs. Fomos except under a strong impulsion. This objection of course occurred to the police, and I understand that they met it by assuming that in his attempt to get the bag from Mrs. Fomos her assailant was recognized and so was compelled to kill her. That assumption was not impossible, but it implied that the murderer was an egregious bungler, and I doubted it. I preferred to assume exactly the opposite — that Mrs. Fomos had been killed, not because she had recognized her attacker, but because he knew she couldn’t recognize him.”
“Is this for effect?” Skinner demanded. “Or do you think you’re getting somewhere?”
“I am already somewhere,” Wolfe retorted. “I’ve just told you who the murderer is.”
Purley Stebbins stood up with his gun in his hand, his eyes on the cast, trying to keep them all in focus at once.
“Go on and spell it,” Cramer growled.
“He wanted the keys, certainly,” Wolfe conceded, “but he didn’t have to kill Mrs. Fomos to get them. He killed her because she was herself a danger to him, as great a danger as Miss Eads. It would have done him no good to kill the one unless he killed the other. That was my hypothesis as early as Tuesday evening, but there were then too many alternatives, more easily tested, to give it priority. Wednesday Mr. Goodwin called on Mrs. Jaffee and Mr. Fomos, and late that afternoon Mr. Irby came and provided me with bait to get you people here. Thursday morning Mrs. Jaffee came, as the result of a brilliant maneuver by Mr. Goodwin the day before, and gave me much better bait than Mr. Irby had supplied, and, as you all know, I used it. But for that maneuver by Mr. Goodwin, Mrs. Jaffee would not have come to see me, and almost certainly she would be alive now. That seems to me much firmer ground for his feeling of responsibility for her death than her phone call to him Thursday night and its sequel. It is regrettable, but not surprising, that his feeling was so intense as to warp his mental processes and pervert his judgment. I did and do sympathize with him.”
“Is all this necessary?” Bowen wanted to know.
“Perhaps not,” Wolfe allowed, “but I’m exposing a murderer and claim a measure of indulgence. You must have expected to spend hours here. Am I tedious?”
“Go ahead.”